Injerencia periodística
Cómo EEUU financia órganos de prensa de todo mundo para comprar influencia mediática
por Jeremy Bigwood
Las campañas domésticas de propaganda como «el fiasco de los gurúes del Pentágono» resultaron expuestas al escarnio público. Los grandes medios emplearon a oficiales militares de alta graduación para escribir «análisis» sobre la guerra en Iraq. Pero se descubrió que tenían lazos con empresas contratistas del Pentágono interesadas en la prosecución de la guerra.
Libaneses de Beruit observan Alhurra, una red de televisión en lengua árabe financiada por EEUU. En árabe, el nombre del canal satelital significa «el libre».
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Debajo del radar, está fermentando otro escándalo del periodismo: el gobierno de EEUU está financiando secretamente a medios de noticias y periodistas extranjeros. Reparticiones públicas como el departamento de Estado, el departamento de Defensa, la Agencia de EEUU para el Desarrollo Internacional (US Agency for International Development, USAID), el Fondo Nacional para la Democracia (National Endowment for Democracy, NED), el Consejo Superior de Radiodifusión (Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG) y el Instituto de EEUU para la Paz (US Institute for Peace, USIP), financian el "desarrollo de los medios" en más de 70 países.
La revista In These Times descubrió que estos programas mantienen a centenares de organizaciones no gubernamentales extranjeras (ONGs), periodistas, políticos, asociaciones de periodista, medios informativos, institutos de mejoramiento de periodistas y facultades académicas de periodismo. El tamaño de los aportes puede extenderse desde algunos miles a millones de dólares.
"El tema que estamos enseñando es la mecánica del periodismo, así sea prensa escrita, televisión o radio", explicó Paul Koscak, portavoz de la USAID. "Cómo hacer una historia, cómo escribir balanceadamente..., todo ese tipo de cosa que usted esperaría de un verdadero profesional de prensa".
Pero alguna gente, especialmente fuera de EEUU, tiene un punto de vista diferente.
"Pensamos que la verdadera intención oculta en estos programas de desarrollo de los medios son los objetivos de la política exterior [estadounidense]", argumentó un diplomático venezolano de alto nivel que pidió no ser identificado. "Cuando el objetivo es cambiar un régimen, estos programas han demostrado ser instrumentos para desestabilizar gobiernos democráticos elegidos que Estados Unidos no apoya".
Isabel MacDonald, directora de comunicaciones de Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) –Imparcialidad y Transparencia en la Información–, un observatorio de medios de Nueva York sin fines de lucro, también tiene una visión crítica. "Éste es un sistema que, a despecho de su profesada adhesión a las normas de la objetividad, a menudo trabaja contra la verdadera democracia" –dijo– "apoyando la disensión sofocante y sin discriminar la información falsa que resulta útil a los objetivos de la política exterior de EEUU".
Muéstreme la agencia...
Resulta difícil medir el tamaño y el alcance del desarrollo de estos medios “independientes” porque existen programas similares disfrazados bajo diversos rubros. Algunas agencias consideran que el "desarrollo de los medios" pertenece a su propio campo, mientras otras lo categorizan como "diplomacia pública" u "operaciones psicológicas". Así, resulta difícil establecer cuánto dinero ingresa a esos programas.
En diciembre de 2007, el Centro para la Ayuda Internacional a los Medios, (Center for International Media Asístanse, CIMA), una repartición del departamento de Estado financiada por el NED, reportó que en 2006 la USAID distribuyó casi 53 millones de dólares en actividades de desarrollo de medios extranjeros. Según el estudio del CIMA, el departamento de Estado proporcionó un estimado de 15 millones de dólares a tales programas. El presupuesto del NED para los proyectos de los medios asciende a 11 millones adicionales. Y el pequeño Instituto para la Paz de EEUU (USIP), con sede en Washington, pudo haber contribuido hasta con 1,4 millones más, según el informe, que no examinó el financiamiento que otorgan a los medios el departamento de Defensa ni la CIA.
El gobierno de EEUU es el proveedor más grande de fondos para el desarrollo de los medios informativos en todo el mundo, habiendo destinado más de 82 millones de dólares en 2006, sin incluir el dinero del Pentágono, de la CIA o de las embajadas de EEUU en los países receptores. Para complicar el cuadro, muchas ONGs extranjeras y periodistas reciben fondos para el desarrollo de los medios de otras fuentes de financiamiento del gobierno de EEUU. Algunos reciben plata de varios subcontratistas de EEUU y de "organizaciones internacionales independientes sin fines de lucro", mientras que otros reciben dinero directamente de la embajada de EEUU en su país.
Tres periodistas extranjeros que reciben financiamiento para el desarrollo de los medios de EEUU dijeron a In These Times que tales regalos no afectan su comportamiento ni alteran su línea editorial. Y niegan que practiquen auto-censura. Ninguno, sin embargo, diría esto en el expediente.
Gustavo Guzmán, un ex periodista y ahora embajador boliviano en EEUU, dijo: "un periodista que reciba tales obsequios no es verdaderamente un periodista, sino un mercenario".
Una historia torcida
El financiamiento del gobierno de EEUU a medios extranjeros tiene una larga historia. A mediados de los años 70, dos investigaciones del Congreso derivadas de Watergate, las comisiones Church y Pike, del senador Frank Church (D-Idaho) y del representante Otis Pike (D-NY), develaron las actividades encubiertas del gobierno de EEUU en otros países. Ambos comités confirmaron que, además de periodistas financiados por la CIA, extranjeros y estadounidenses, el gobierno de Washington también subvencionó medios impresos extranjeros, radios y cadenas de televisión, algo que también hacían los soviéticos.
Por ejemplo, Encounter, una revista literaria anti-comunista publicada en Inglaterra entre 1953 y 1990, fue desenmascarada en 1967 como una operación de la CIA. Y, al igual que en el caso de hoy, organizaciones de nombre benigno, tales como el Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura, también fueron fachadas de la CIA.
Las investigaciones del Congreso establecieron que el financiamiento clandestino de EEUU a medios extranjeros desempeñó a menudo un papel relevante en la política exterior, pero en ninguna parte tanto como en Chile a comienzos de los años 70.
"La principal operación de propaganda de la CIA, a través del periódico de la oposición El Mercurio, probablemente contribuyó lo más directamente posible al derrocamiento sangriento del gobierno de Allende y de la democracia en Chile", dijo Peter Kornbluh, analista del National Security Archive (Archivo de Seguridad Nacional), un instituto de investigación no gubernamental independiente.
In These Times preguntó a la agencia si todavía financia a periodistas extranjeros. El portavoz de la CIA Paul Gimigliano respondió: "La CIA, de ordinario, no niega ni confirma públicamente esta clase de alegatos".
¿Enemigos del departamento de Estado?
El 19 de agosto de 2002, la embajada de EEUU en Caracas, Venezuela, envió el siguiente cable a Washington:
"Esperamos que la participación de Sr. Lacayo como Grant IV sea reflejada directamente en su reporte sobre asuntos políticos e internacionales, pues él asciende en su carrera, y mejorar nuestros lazos con él significaría ganar a un amigo potencialmente importante en posiciones de influencia editorial". [Nota del editor: El nombre del Sr. Lacayo se ha cambiado para proteger su identidad].
El departamento de Estado había elegido a un periodista venezolano para visitar EEUU bajo el proyecto conocido como Grant IV, un programa cultural de intercambio iniciado en 1961. El año pasado, el departamento trajo a unos 467 periodistas a EEUU, a un costo cercano a los 10 millones de dólares, según un funcionario del departamento del Estado que solicitó anonimato.
MacDonald, de FAIR, dijo que las "visitas sirven para construir lazos entre los periodistas extranjeros visitantes y las instituciones a condición de que... sean extremadamente acríticos de la política exterior de EEUU y de los intereses corporativos que sirve".
El departamento de Estado financia el desarrollo de los medios a través de varias de sus oficinas, incluyendo el Bureau de Asuntos Educacionales y Culturales (Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, BECA), el Bureau de Inteligencia y de Investigación (Bureau of Intelligence and Research, INR) y el Bureau de Democracia, Derechos Humanos y Trabajo (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, DRL), así como directamente desde sus oficinas y embajadas regionales por todo el mundo. También financia a periodistas extranjeros a través de otra sección llamada Oficina de Diplomacia Pública y de Asuntos Públicos (Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affaire, OPDPA). Lo más importante es que el departamento de Estado generalmente decide qué otras agencias, tales como la USAID y el NED, deben invertir sus fondos en desarrollo de los medios.
(El departamento de Estado no respondió a los requerimientos de información de In These Times respecto a su presupuesto para el desarrollo de los medios, pero el estudio del CIMA 2007 demuestra, por ejemplo, que sólo el DRL recibió en 2006 casi 12 millones de dólares para el desarrollo del periodismo.)
El caso de Bolivia es un ejemplo que revela cómo EEUU ha estado financiando el desarrollo de los medios informativos de un país. Según el sitio web del DRL [Bureau de Democracia, Derechos Humanos y Trabajo], en 2006 esta oficina patrocinó en Bolivia 15 talleres sobre libertad de prensa y de expresión. "Los periodistas del país y los estudiantes de periodismo discutieron la ética profesional, las buenas prácticas de difusión de noticias y el papel de los medios en una democracia", afirmó el sitio. "Estos programas fueron enviados a 200 estaciones de radio en áreas remotas a través del país".
En 2006, Bolivia eligió a Evo Morales, su primer presidente indígena, cuyo acceso al gobierno en repetidas ocasiones intentaron impedir tanto EEUU como los grandes medios de Bolivia. Morales y sus partidarios alegan que el gobierno estadounidense está detrás de un movimiento separatista en las provincias del este de Bolivia, ricas en gas, y alegan que ese apoyo encubierto implicó reuniones para el desarrollo de los medios, según el periodista y anterior portavoz presidencial Alex Contreras. Koscak, de la USAID, negó los cargos.
Éste es el BBG
En 1999, el Consejo Gubernamental de Radiodifusión (BBG) se convirtió en una agencia federal independiente. Hasta 2006 recibió un presupuesto de 650 millones de dólares, según las estimaciones del CIMA, con cerca de 1,5 millones de dólares destinados al desarrollo de los medios y entrenamiento de periodistas en Argentina, Bolivia, Kenia, Mozambique, Nigeria y Paquistán.
Además de la Voz de América, el BBG también opera varias otras estaciones de radio y TV. La estación de televisión Alhurra, con sede en Springfield, Virginia, "es una red comercial libre de televisión vía satélite en lengua árabe para el Oriente Medio, dedicada sobre todo a noticias y a información", según su sitio web. Alhurra, “el libre” en árabe, ha sido descrita por el Washington Post como "el esfuerzo más grande y más costoso del gobierno de EEUU por sacudir a la opinión extranjera a través del éter desde la creación de la Voz de América en 1942".
BBG también financia Radio Sawa (para la juventud árabe, con presencia en Egipto, el Gofo Pérsico, Iraq, Líbano, Levante, Marruecos y Sudán), Radio Farda (para Irán) y Radio Asia Libre (con programación regional para Asia). El BBG también financia transmisiones a través de la Radio y TV Martí, cuyo gasto ascendería a casi 39 millones de dólares en el año fiscal 2008, según la Justificación del Presupuesto para Operaciones Extranjeras del Congreso (Foreign Operations Congressional Budget Justification).
Banda Del Pentágono
El departamento de Defensa (DOD) rechazó hablar con In These Times acerca de sus programas de desarrollo de los medios. Según un artículo de Jeff Perth, publicado en The New York Times el 11 de diciembre de 2005, "los militares operan estaciones de radio y periódicos [en Iraq y Afganistán] pero no destapan sus lazos estadounidenses".
La tarea del desarrollo de los medios en Iraq "fue conferida al departamento de Defensa, cuyos contratistas importantes tenían poca o ninguna experiencia relevante", según un informe del USIP de octubre 2007.
Un estudio 2007 del Centro de Estudios Globales de Comunicación de la Escuela Annenberg para la Comunicación, de la Universidad de Pennsylvania, descubrió que Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), una contratista de largo tiempo del DOD, recibió un contrato inicial de 80 millones de dólares por un año para transformar en “independiente” un sistema de medios dirigido por el gobierno, mediante un estilo similar al del servicio de noticias nacionales de la BBC, para contrarrestar en parte la influencia que tenía Al Jazeera en la región.
"La supervisora SAIC era una oficina del DOD que se especializaba en operaciones de guerra psicológica, que muchos creen contribuyó a la opinión de los iraquíes de que la Red de Medios de Iraq (Iraq Media Network, IMN) era simplemente un apéndice de la Autoridad Provisional de la Coalición (Coalition Provisional Authority)", dijo el informe del USIP. "El funcionamiento de SAIC en Iraq fue considerado costoso, no profesional y fallido en cuanto a dotar de objetividad e independencia al IMN". SAIC, eventualmente, perdió eventual el contrato ante otra compañía, Harris Corp.
SAIC no fue el único subcontratista de medios del Pentágono que falló masivamente. Peter Eisler, en un artículo del 30 de abril en USA Today, aseguró que el sitio web iraquí de noticias Mawtani.com es otro medio de información financiado por el Pentágono.
USAID: «de la gente americana»
El presidente John F. Kennedy creó la Agencia de EEUU para el Desarrollo Internacional (USAID) en noviembre de 1961 para administrar ayuda humanitaria y el desarrollo económico por todo el mundo. Pero mientras la USAID se ufana de promover la transparencia en los asuntos de otras naciones, es poco transparente consigo misma. Esto es especialmente verdadero respecto a sus programas de desarrollo de los medios.
"En un número de países, incluyendo Venezuela y Bolivia, la USAID está actuando más como una agencia implicada en acción encubierta, como la CIA, que como una agencia de ayuda o desarrollo", dijo Mark Weisbrot, un economista del Centro para la Investigación Económica y Política (Center for Economic and Policy Research), un “tanque pensante” de Washington.
De hecho, mientras los investigadores han podido obtener los presupuestos generales de los programas globales de USAID recurriendo al Acta de Libertad de Información (Freedom of Information Act, FIA), así como los nombres de los países o de las regiones geográficas donde ha estado fluyendo el dinero, los nombres de las organizaciones extranjeras específicas que reciben estos fondos son secretos de estado, exactamente como en el caso de la CIA.
Y en los casos donde se conocen los nombres de las organizaciones receptoras y se solicita información sobre ellas, la USAID responde que no puede "confirmar o negar la existencia de antecedentes", usando el mismo lenguaje que la CIA. (Nota del autor: En 2006, perdí un pleito contra la USAID, en una tentativa por identificar a las organizaciones que financia en el exterior).
USAID financia tres importantes operaciones de desarrollo de los medios: la Investigación Internacional y Sostenimiento de Intercambios (International Research & Exchanges Board, más conocida como IREX), la red Internews Network y la Búsqueda para una Tierra Común (Search for Common Ground), que tiene gran parte de financiamiento privado. Para complicar el cuadro, esas tres operaciones también han recibido financiamiento del departamento de Estado, de la Iniciativa Sociedad del Oriente Medio (Middle East Partnership Initiative, MEPI), del Bureau de Inteligencia e Investigación (Bureau of Intelligence and Research) y del Bureau Democracia, Derechos Humanos y Trabajo.
Según sus folletos, IREX es una organización internacional sin fines de lucro que "trabaja con socios locales para mejorar el profesionalismo y la sustentabilidad económica a largo plazo de periódicos, estaciones de radio y televisión y medios de Internet". La declaración impositiva "990" de IREX indicó en 2006 que sus actividades con los medios incluyen "pequeñas becas concedidas a más de 100 periodistas y organizaciones de medios; entrenamiento para centenares de periodistas y empresas de medios" y tiene un personal de más de 400 empleados que resuelven consultas y despachan programas a más de 50 países.
La red Internews Network, llamada comúnmente "Internews", recibe sólo algo más de la mitad del presupuesto del IREX pero es más conocida. Fundada en 1982, la mayoría del financiamiento de Internews proviene de la USAID, aunque también recibe fondos del NED y del departamento del Estado. Internews es una de las operaciones más grandes en el negocio del desarrollo de los medios independiente, financiando a docenas de ONGs, periodistas, asociaciones de periodistas, institutos de entrenamiento y facultades académicas de periodismo en docenas de países a través del mundo.
Las operaciones de Internews se han cerrado en países tales como Bielorrusia, Rusia y Uzbekistán, donde ha sido acusada de minar a los gobiernos locales y promover las agendas de EEUU. En un discurso en Washington DC en mayo de 2003, Andrew Natsios, ex administrador de USAID, describió a los contratistas privados financiados por la Agencia como "un brazo del gobierno de EEUU".
El otro mayor receptor de fondos de USAID para el desarrollo de los medios, Search for Common Ground, recibe más dinero del sector privado que del gobierno de EEUU, en la mayoría de los casos por "resolución de conflictos", según el informe del CIMA.
Cuba e Irán son dos blancos importantes de la USAID para el desarrollo y asistencia de los medios. El presupuesto USAID para la "Libertad de los Medios y la Libertad de Información" (Media Freedom and Freedom of Information) –durante la "transición" de Cuba bajo la Comisión de Asistencia para una Cuba Libre II (Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba II, CAFC II)– totaliza 14 millones de dólares. Esto representa un incremento de 10,5 millones respecto a la cantidad asignada en 2006. En Irán, la USAID ha presupuestado unos 25 millones de dólares para el desarrollo de medios durante el año fiscal 2008. Forma parte de un paquete de 75 millones destinados a lo que la USAID llama "diplomacia transformacional" en ese país.
Financiando “democracia” estilo USA "Mucho de lo que lo hoy hacemos lo hizo secretamente la CIA durante 25 años", dijo Allen Weinstein, uno de los fundadores del National Endowment for Democracy, en un artículo publicado en 1991 por The Washington Post.
Establecido a comienzos de los años 80, el NED "es gobernado por una junta directiva independiente, no partidaria". Su propósito pretende apoyar organizaciones favorables a la democracia alrededor del mundo. Sin embargo, históricamente, su agenda ha sido definida por los objetivos de la política exterior de Washington.
"Cuando se deja de lado la retórica de la democracia, el NED es una herramienta especializada en penetrar por debajo del nivel de origen popular a la sociedad civil de otros países" para alcanzar las metas de la política exterior de EEUU, escribió el profesor William Róbinson, de la Universidad Santa Bárbara, de California, en su libro A Faustian Bargain. Róbinson estuvo en Nicaragua a fines de los años 80 y observó cómo el trabajo del NED con la oposición nicaragüense apoyada por EEUU debilitaba la influencia de los sandinistas izquierdistas durante las elecciones de 1990.
El NED también estuvo bajo un gran escrutinio público en Venezuela, cuando se conoció que financiaba al movimiento anti-Chávez. En su libro El Código Chávez, la abogada venezolana-estadounidense Eva Golinger señaló que los beneficiarios del NED (y de la USAID) estuvieron implicados en la tentativa de golpe contra el presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez en 2002, como asimismo en la conducción gerencial de las "huelgas de trabajadores" contra la industria petrolera del país. Golinger también observó que el NED financió a Súmate, una ONG venezolana supuestamente destinada a promover el ejercicio libre de los derechos políticos de los ciudadanos que orquestó el fallido referéndum revocatorio contra Chávez en 2004.
Dependencia y obligación
El concepto de la separación de los poderes entre la prensa y el gobierno es un principio básico no sólo del sistema político de EEUU, sino también del artículo 19 de la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos. El financiamiento del gobierno de EEUU de cualquier medio de prensa altera las relaciones cliente-donante como para impedir considerarlo un medio independiente.
"Cualquier donación de equipos del gobierno de EEUU, tales como computadoras y grabadores, afecta el trabajo de los periodistas y a las organizaciones del periodismo", dijo Contreras, el periodista boliviano, "porque crea dependencia y una obligación a las agendas ocultas de las instituciones
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Un episodio hasta hoy desconocido de la guerra de Bush - Preguntas sobre una frustrada operación de la CIA en Chile por Ernesto Carmona*
Un episodio hasta hoy desconocido de la guerra de Bush
Preguntas sobre una frustrada operación de la CIA en Chile
por Ernesto Carmona*
El Plan Condor, un sistema para secuestrar, torturar y eliminar físicamente a cualquier persona por sus ideas o tendencias políticas, que funcionó en América Latina, sobre todo en época de las dictaduras de Pinochet en Chile y Videla en Argentina, bajo auspicio de los EEUU sigue vigente hoy bajo otra forma y modalidad. Estas redes mundiales de represión trabajan a escala internacional y son capaces de actuar y secuestrar a cualquier persona y violar cualquier soberanía, incluso bajo régimen democrático. Cuentan con la complicidad de ciertas esferas estatales en el país donde intervienen. El caso chileno.
El presidente de la Comisión Europea estaría implicado en los vuelos secretos de la CIA
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En Chile están ocurriendo cosas tan extrañas como una fallida operación secreta de la CIA para secuestrar en Iquique a un ciudadano libanés supuestamente vinculado a Hezbollah. Esta historia, revelada por el diario de gobierno La Nación, no tuvo ninguna repercusión. Nadie preguntó quién autorizó esas operaciones extranjeras que suponen el ingreso de armas, equipos de espionaje y efectivos que en cualquier país ameritarían una autorización del Congreso Nacional.
La historia de espionaje CIA, relatada por Luis Narváez y Javier Rebolledo en el diario La Nación [1] del domingo 8 de junio, ocurrió en 2002, bajo el gobierno de Ricardo Lagos, pero salió a la luz en un informe reciente del departamento de Estado.
Bajo el título «El frustrado secuestro de la CIA», el diario asegura que en marzo pasado, un informe del Departamento de Estado norteamericano confirmó un episodio hasta hoy desconocido de la guerra de Bush contra el terrorismo islámico.
Con autorización oficial, la CIA practicó seguimientos, escuchas telefónicas y fotografías a árabes residentes en Iquique. Pero la colaboración se acabó cuando la agencia intentó plagiar a un ciudadano libanés vinculado a Hezbollah y la policía civil se negó a ser parte en el secuestro. Pareciera que la Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia de Chile (ANI) no enfrentó esta amenaza «terrorista», porque La Nación no le atribuye ningún protagonismo en esta intriga internacional, sino a una rama de la Policía de Investigaciones llamada Jefatura de Inteligencia Policial (Jipol).
¿Quién es el ciudadano libanés? El matutino asegura que le cambió la identidad para protegerlo, llamándolo «Arafat Ismail».
Se trataría de un comerciante que se instaló en la zona franca de Iquique después de la destrucción de las Torres Gemelas de Nueva York, el 11 de septiembre 2001. Sin embargo, pareciera que la presa de la CIA era Assad Ahmad Barakat, supuestamente vinculado a «Arafat Ismail».
Para la CIA, Barakat es la cara visible de los negocios de una supuesta red de Hezbollah en Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, zona franca enclavada en la Triple Frontera con Argentina y Brasil, paraíso del contrabando y la falsificación industrial de relojes Rolex, cámaras, perfumes y toda clase de productos de “marca”.
Según La Nación para «la Secretaría de Prevención del Terrorismo de Paraguay, Barakat es jefe militar de Hezbollah en la triple frontera. De acuerdo a los antecedentes que maneja investigaciones, ingresó a Chile el 25 de junio de 2001, momento en que realizó los trámites para concretar su solicitud de residencia, registrando como domicilio particular Avenida Arturo Prat número 2748, departamento 11, Iquique". El diario dice que es el mismo domicilio que después dio "Ismail».
La Nación aseguró que una «fresca mañana de marzo de 2002 un equipo de agentes encubiertos de la CIA en Iquique preparaba la que sería una de las acciones más audaces en la región». Añadió que «cinco personajes esperaban las órdenes del líder del grupo, una mujer robusta e impecablemente vestida, que se movilizaba en un vehículo con patente roja: era M. T. Para el común de la gente, ella sólo cumplía labores diplomáticas, pero en verdad era la jefa de la CIA en Chile».
Destino: Guantánamo
La Nación : «El plan que tenían los estadounidenses parecía simple. Harían todos los arreglos para que ingresara un avión de transporte indetectable a los radares. Aterrizaría a poca distancia de Iquique, en pleno desierto. Los policías chilenos debían cumplir con el trabajo operativo: apresar al libanés y transportarlo hasta el lugar. Ahí terminaba su labor. Si bien los estadounidenses no comentaron donde lo llevarían, señalaron que necesitaban urgentemente someterlo a un interrogatorio. Aunque nunca se conversó de manera explícita, los agentes de la policía civil sabían que su destino sería la cárcel de Guantánamo o algún centro clandestino. Lo que sí se encargaron de asegurar los integrantes de la CIA es que Chile no se vería involucrado, ni siquiera de forma indirecta, en la operación. Se informaría oficialmente que Ismail había sido apresado dentro de las fronteras de Estados Unidos. Como argumento a su favor, los estadounidenses contaban que cuando Arafat Ismail ingresó a Chile, entregó como domicilio privado el mismo departamento de calle Arturo Prat en que había fijado su residencia Barakat».
El «reportaje» se basa también en un informe publicado el 30 de marzo de 2007 por el Departamento de Estado «donde comunica detalladamente al Congreso de su país las actividades realizadas en todo el mundo a partir del 11/S de 2001, especialmente las de los últimos años». Según ese documento, "funcionarios (chilenos) monitorearon posibles vínculos entre extremistas de la Zona de Libre Comercio de Iquique (Zofri) y los del área de la Triple Frontera, cuando aumentan los lazos comerciales entre ambas áreas".
En lo medular, el diario destacó “la cooperación desde un comienzo con Estados Unidos una vez firmados los convenios sobre la lucha antiterrorista tras los ataques en Nueva York y Washington”. Y añadió que “en la práctica, esto derivó en un intercambio no sólo a nivel policial, sino en la creación de un sistema que facilitó la intervención, en toda Sudamérica, de los organismos de inteligencia de EEUU, especialmente de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia, (CIA)”.
Entrado marzo de 2002, “los funcionarios de la CIA eran cada vez más insistentes respecto a la necesidad de apresar a Arafat Ismail”, dijo La Nación. “Un testigo ocular de una tensa conversación entre la diplomática y uno de los jefes del grupo de policías chilenos aseguró a La Nación Domingo que "se hizo una petición explícita para que el equipo chileno apresara al libanés en el menor tiempo posible".
¿Policías «buenos»?
Pero también existirían policías «buenos», o por lo menos respetuosos del estado de derecho.
La Nación: «La presión que ejercieron los agentes de la CIA fue extremadamente fuerte. Al arduo trabajo de los seguimientos, escuchas telefónicas, fotografías y análisis a las empresas de los ciudadanos de origen libanés en Chile, ahora se sumaba la voluntad expresa de la inteligencia estadounidense de cometer una acción que, para los chilenos, era absolutamente ilegal y contraria al Estado de Derecho».
Según el diario, «los detectives se ciñeron la Constitución chilena y se excusaron señalando que no tenían una orden judicial ni razones concretas para sospechar que Ismail había cometido un ilícito en territorio nacional. La misma fuente, relató que ‘la funcionaria dijo que lo único que teníamos que hacer era agarrarlo y llevarlo para que ellos lo sacaran en un avión’. Los policías chilenos insistieron en que llevar a cabo esa acción importaba una abierta violación a los derechos de Ismail, lo que, según las mismas fuentes, a la larga resultó determinante para evitar el secuestro».
«No sólo era una acción ilegal y contraria al Estado de Derecho. Si hubiésemos colaborado, habríamos puesto al país en riesgo máximo de recibir una represalia de alguno de los movimientos islámicos fundamentalistas, como ha ocurrido en otros países", aseguró a La Nación “un alto jefe policial de la época».
El diario afirmó que “los antecedentes con que cuenta este medio indican que los funcionarios chilenos que se negaron a cumplir la misión especial de la CIA, dieron cuenta al director de la Jipol, Luis Henríquez”.
Epílogo y preguntas que nadie formula
El epílogo fue que “Arafat Ismail” abandonó Chile “por su cuenta” a mediados de 2002 y no fue a parar con sus huesos y en secreto a Guantánamo donde 270 seres humanos se pudren en una inhumana “prisión preventiva” acusados de “terrorismo”, muchos sin saber de qué se les acusa y la mayoría sin que se les hayan formulado cargos específicos, excepto 19 juicios militares sin ninguna garantía de equidad, todavía no iniciados y ahora en tela de juicio por una decisión de la Suprema Corte del 13 de junio permitiendo por tercera vez que los detenidos acudan a tribunales civiles federales donde el gobierno de Bush debe justificar sus acusaciones.
Las dos decisiones anteriores de la Corte no fueron tomadas en cuenta por el “estado de derecho” impuesto por la virtual dictadura de Bush. Y un segundo epílogo fue que en octubre 2002, M.T., la funcionaria de la embajada de EEUU en Chile y encargada de la CIA también abandonó el país”.
Pero más allá de la CIA haya terminado frustrada, quedan flotando muchas preguntas sin respuesta:
–¿Quién o quiénes autorizaron el ingreso de estos agentes al país?
–¿Cómo ingresaron los agentes de la CIA al país?
–¿Con qué documentos de identidad pasaron las fronteras y el control de la Policía Internacional?
–¿Con qué armamento e instrumentos tecnológicos de persecución y utilización policial ingresaron al país y cuánto dinero acreditaron para su estadía en Chile?
–Si ingresaron con documentación falsa, ¿fueron advertidos los policías que controlan el ingreso al país de cualquier ciudadano?
–¿Qué lección sacaron los detectives de Policía Internacional tras su experiencia con el ingreso de Alberto Fujimori a Santiago en 2005?
–¿Cuántos procedimientos de control policial se violaron con el ingreso de los agentes CIA?
–¿Quiénes elaboraron y archivaron las bitácoras de ingreso de los agentes de la CIA a Chile?
–¿Qué vehículos ingresaron al país?, ¿utilizaron placas diplomáticas para desplazarse en Chile?, ¿eran vehículos de la Embajada o vehículos arrendados a empresas chilenas colaboradoras de la CIA?
–¿En qué lugares y cuándo se alojaron los agentes durante su permanencia en Santiago, Iquique y otras ciudades del país?
–¿Cuáles fueron sus contactos con la ANI en Santiago, con los policías de Investigaciones y con funcionarios del Gobierno?
–¿Contaron con el apoyo logístico de otras embajadas, aparte de la de Estados Unidos?
–¿Qué han dicho sobre este tema los voceros del Gobierno, de la policía de Investigaciones, ministerio del Interior, Relaciones Exteriores?
Etcétera. Todas estas preguntas pueden originar a su vez otras interrogantes. Pero nadie las formula.
Ernesto Carmona
Ernesto Carmona es consejero nacional del Colegio de Periodistas de Chile y secretario ejecutivo de la Comisión Investigadora de Atentados a Periodistas (Ciap) de la Federación Latinoamericana de Periodistas (Felap). Ernesto Carmona es miembro de la Red Voltaire y del movimiento Axis for Peace.
Los artículos de esta autora o autor
Preguntas sobre una frustrada operación de la CIA en Chile
por Ernesto Carmona*
El Plan Condor, un sistema para secuestrar, torturar y eliminar físicamente a cualquier persona por sus ideas o tendencias políticas, que funcionó en América Latina, sobre todo en época de las dictaduras de Pinochet en Chile y Videla en Argentina, bajo auspicio de los EEUU sigue vigente hoy bajo otra forma y modalidad. Estas redes mundiales de represión trabajan a escala internacional y son capaces de actuar y secuestrar a cualquier persona y violar cualquier soberanía, incluso bajo régimen democrático. Cuentan con la complicidad de ciertas esferas estatales en el país donde intervienen. El caso chileno.
El presidente de la Comisión Europea estaría implicado en los vuelos secretos de la CIA
______________________________________________
En Chile están ocurriendo cosas tan extrañas como una fallida operación secreta de la CIA para secuestrar en Iquique a un ciudadano libanés supuestamente vinculado a Hezbollah. Esta historia, revelada por el diario de gobierno La Nación, no tuvo ninguna repercusión. Nadie preguntó quién autorizó esas operaciones extranjeras que suponen el ingreso de armas, equipos de espionaje y efectivos que en cualquier país ameritarían una autorización del Congreso Nacional.
La historia de espionaje CIA, relatada por Luis Narváez y Javier Rebolledo en el diario La Nación [1] del domingo 8 de junio, ocurrió en 2002, bajo el gobierno de Ricardo Lagos, pero salió a la luz en un informe reciente del departamento de Estado.
Bajo el título «El frustrado secuestro de la CIA», el diario asegura que en marzo pasado, un informe del Departamento de Estado norteamericano confirmó un episodio hasta hoy desconocido de la guerra de Bush contra el terrorismo islámico.
Con autorización oficial, la CIA practicó seguimientos, escuchas telefónicas y fotografías a árabes residentes en Iquique. Pero la colaboración se acabó cuando la agencia intentó plagiar a un ciudadano libanés vinculado a Hezbollah y la policía civil se negó a ser parte en el secuestro. Pareciera que la Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia de Chile (ANI) no enfrentó esta amenaza «terrorista», porque La Nación no le atribuye ningún protagonismo en esta intriga internacional, sino a una rama de la Policía de Investigaciones llamada Jefatura de Inteligencia Policial (Jipol).
¿Quién es el ciudadano libanés? El matutino asegura que le cambió la identidad para protegerlo, llamándolo «Arafat Ismail».
Se trataría de un comerciante que se instaló en la zona franca de Iquique después de la destrucción de las Torres Gemelas de Nueva York, el 11 de septiembre 2001. Sin embargo, pareciera que la presa de la CIA era Assad Ahmad Barakat, supuestamente vinculado a «Arafat Ismail».
Para la CIA, Barakat es la cara visible de los negocios de una supuesta red de Hezbollah en Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, zona franca enclavada en la Triple Frontera con Argentina y Brasil, paraíso del contrabando y la falsificación industrial de relojes Rolex, cámaras, perfumes y toda clase de productos de “marca”.
Según La Nación para «la Secretaría de Prevención del Terrorismo de Paraguay, Barakat es jefe militar de Hezbollah en la triple frontera. De acuerdo a los antecedentes que maneja investigaciones, ingresó a Chile el 25 de junio de 2001, momento en que realizó los trámites para concretar su solicitud de residencia, registrando como domicilio particular Avenida Arturo Prat número 2748, departamento 11, Iquique". El diario dice que es el mismo domicilio que después dio "Ismail».
La Nación aseguró que una «fresca mañana de marzo de 2002 un equipo de agentes encubiertos de la CIA en Iquique preparaba la que sería una de las acciones más audaces en la región». Añadió que «cinco personajes esperaban las órdenes del líder del grupo, una mujer robusta e impecablemente vestida, que se movilizaba en un vehículo con patente roja: era M. T. Para el común de la gente, ella sólo cumplía labores diplomáticas, pero en verdad era la jefa de la CIA en Chile».
Destino: Guantánamo
La Nación : «El plan que tenían los estadounidenses parecía simple. Harían todos los arreglos para que ingresara un avión de transporte indetectable a los radares. Aterrizaría a poca distancia de Iquique, en pleno desierto. Los policías chilenos debían cumplir con el trabajo operativo: apresar al libanés y transportarlo hasta el lugar. Ahí terminaba su labor. Si bien los estadounidenses no comentaron donde lo llevarían, señalaron que necesitaban urgentemente someterlo a un interrogatorio. Aunque nunca se conversó de manera explícita, los agentes de la policía civil sabían que su destino sería la cárcel de Guantánamo o algún centro clandestino. Lo que sí se encargaron de asegurar los integrantes de la CIA es que Chile no se vería involucrado, ni siquiera de forma indirecta, en la operación. Se informaría oficialmente que Ismail había sido apresado dentro de las fronteras de Estados Unidos. Como argumento a su favor, los estadounidenses contaban que cuando Arafat Ismail ingresó a Chile, entregó como domicilio privado el mismo departamento de calle Arturo Prat en que había fijado su residencia Barakat».
El «reportaje» se basa también en un informe publicado el 30 de marzo de 2007 por el Departamento de Estado «donde comunica detalladamente al Congreso de su país las actividades realizadas en todo el mundo a partir del 11/S de 2001, especialmente las de los últimos años». Según ese documento, "funcionarios (chilenos) monitorearon posibles vínculos entre extremistas de la Zona de Libre Comercio de Iquique (Zofri) y los del área de la Triple Frontera, cuando aumentan los lazos comerciales entre ambas áreas".
En lo medular, el diario destacó “la cooperación desde un comienzo con Estados Unidos una vez firmados los convenios sobre la lucha antiterrorista tras los ataques en Nueva York y Washington”. Y añadió que “en la práctica, esto derivó en un intercambio no sólo a nivel policial, sino en la creación de un sistema que facilitó la intervención, en toda Sudamérica, de los organismos de inteligencia de EEUU, especialmente de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia, (CIA)”.
Entrado marzo de 2002, “los funcionarios de la CIA eran cada vez más insistentes respecto a la necesidad de apresar a Arafat Ismail”, dijo La Nación. “Un testigo ocular de una tensa conversación entre la diplomática y uno de los jefes del grupo de policías chilenos aseguró a La Nación Domingo que "se hizo una petición explícita para que el equipo chileno apresara al libanés en el menor tiempo posible".
¿Policías «buenos»?
Pero también existirían policías «buenos», o por lo menos respetuosos del estado de derecho.
La Nación: «La presión que ejercieron los agentes de la CIA fue extremadamente fuerte. Al arduo trabajo de los seguimientos, escuchas telefónicas, fotografías y análisis a las empresas de los ciudadanos de origen libanés en Chile, ahora se sumaba la voluntad expresa de la inteligencia estadounidense de cometer una acción que, para los chilenos, era absolutamente ilegal y contraria al Estado de Derecho».
Según el diario, «los detectives se ciñeron la Constitución chilena y se excusaron señalando que no tenían una orden judicial ni razones concretas para sospechar que Ismail había cometido un ilícito en territorio nacional. La misma fuente, relató que ‘la funcionaria dijo que lo único que teníamos que hacer era agarrarlo y llevarlo para que ellos lo sacaran en un avión’. Los policías chilenos insistieron en que llevar a cabo esa acción importaba una abierta violación a los derechos de Ismail, lo que, según las mismas fuentes, a la larga resultó determinante para evitar el secuestro».
«No sólo era una acción ilegal y contraria al Estado de Derecho. Si hubiésemos colaborado, habríamos puesto al país en riesgo máximo de recibir una represalia de alguno de los movimientos islámicos fundamentalistas, como ha ocurrido en otros países", aseguró a La Nación “un alto jefe policial de la época».
El diario afirmó que “los antecedentes con que cuenta este medio indican que los funcionarios chilenos que se negaron a cumplir la misión especial de la CIA, dieron cuenta al director de la Jipol, Luis Henríquez”.
Epílogo y preguntas que nadie formula
El epílogo fue que “Arafat Ismail” abandonó Chile “por su cuenta” a mediados de 2002 y no fue a parar con sus huesos y en secreto a Guantánamo donde 270 seres humanos se pudren en una inhumana “prisión preventiva” acusados de “terrorismo”, muchos sin saber de qué se les acusa y la mayoría sin que se les hayan formulado cargos específicos, excepto 19 juicios militares sin ninguna garantía de equidad, todavía no iniciados y ahora en tela de juicio por una decisión de la Suprema Corte del 13 de junio permitiendo por tercera vez que los detenidos acudan a tribunales civiles federales donde el gobierno de Bush debe justificar sus acusaciones.
Las dos decisiones anteriores de la Corte no fueron tomadas en cuenta por el “estado de derecho” impuesto por la virtual dictadura de Bush. Y un segundo epílogo fue que en octubre 2002, M.T., la funcionaria de la embajada de EEUU en Chile y encargada de la CIA también abandonó el país”.
Pero más allá de la CIA haya terminado frustrada, quedan flotando muchas preguntas sin respuesta:
–¿Quién o quiénes autorizaron el ingreso de estos agentes al país?
–¿Cómo ingresaron los agentes de la CIA al país?
–¿Con qué documentos de identidad pasaron las fronteras y el control de la Policía Internacional?
–¿Con qué armamento e instrumentos tecnológicos de persecución y utilización policial ingresaron al país y cuánto dinero acreditaron para su estadía en Chile?
–Si ingresaron con documentación falsa, ¿fueron advertidos los policías que controlan el ingreso al país de cualquier ciudadano?
–¿Qué lección sacaron los detectives de Policía Internacional tras su experiencia con el ingreso de Alberto Fujimori a Santiago en 2005?
–¿Cuántos procedimientos de control policial se violaron con el ingreso de los agentes CIA?
–¿Quiénes elaboraron y archivaron las bitácoras de ingreso de los agentes de la CIA a Chile?
–¿Qué vehículos ingresaron al país?, ¿utilizaron placas diplomáticas para desplazarse en Chile?, ¿eran vehículos de la Embajada o vehículos arrendados a empresas chilenas colaboradoras de la CIA?
–¿En qué lugares y cuándo se alojaron los agentes durante su permanencia en Santiago, Iquique y otras ciudades del país?
–¿Cuáles fueron sus contactos con la ANI en Santiago, con los policías de Investigaciones y con funcionarios del Gobierno?
–¿Contaron con el apoyo logístico de otras embajadas, aparte de la de Estados Unidos?
–¿Qué han dicho sobre este tema los voceros del Gobierno, de la policía de Investigaciones, ministerio del Interior, Relaciones Exteriores?
Etcétera. Todas estas preguntas pueden originar a su vez otras interrogantes. Pero nadie las formula.
Ernesto Carmona
Ernesto Carmona es consejero nacional del Colegio de Periodistas de Chile y secretario ejecutivo de la Comisión Investigadora de Atentados a Periodistas (Ciap) de la Federación Latinoamericana de Periodistas (Felap). Ernesto Carmona es miembro de la Red Voltaire y del movimiento Axis for Peace.
Los artículos de esta autora o autor
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Izzy Stone, Patron Saint of Bloggers
By Jeff Cohen
June 17, 2008
Editor's Note: In the days before the Internet, one of the great voices of independent journalism was I.F. Stone, whose simple newsletter challenged the conventional thinking of the day.
In this guest essay, media critic Jeff Cohen recalls Stone's contributions to the cause of journalism:
It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.
Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?
Well, yeah, but when I think of today's blunt, fact-based online hell-raisers, my mind quickly flashes on Izzy Stone. You may think of Josh Marshall or Glenn Greenwald or Arianna Huffington. I think of Izzy.
Before there was an Internet, Izzy Stone was doing the work we associate with today's best bloggers.
Like them, he was obsessed with citing original documents and texts. But before search engines, Izzy had to consume ten newspapers per day – and physically visit government archives and press offices, and personally pore over thousands of words in the Congressional Record.
That's how he repeatedly scooped the gullible, faux-objective MSM of his day in exposing government deceit, like that propelling the Vietnam War.
Izzy was the ultimate un-embedded reporter. His journalism was motivated by a simple maxim that resonates loudly in our era of Cheneys and Rumsfelds and WMD hoaxes: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."
Month after month from 1953 to 1969 I.F. Stone's Weekly (biweekly through 1971) exposed deceptions as fast as governments could spin them. His timely and timeless dispatches are gathered in an exceptional paperback, The Best of I.F. Stone.
In real time in August 1964, Izzy was virtually alone in challenging the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, an imaginary "unprovoked attack" on U.S. warships used by the Johnson administration to send several hundred thousand American troops into Vietnam.
How did Izzy do it? By citing international law texts and finding nuggets of truth in the Congressional Record of the Senate debate (no C-SPAN then) and in contradictory reporting in mainstream publications.
Izzy's expose began boldly: "The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public." He fumed at the credulous MSM: "The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen."
Only two senators, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Alaska's Ernest Gruening, had voted against the Tonkin Resolution; Izzy noted that the press had "dropped an Iron Curtain weeks ago on the antiwar speeches of Morse and Gruening."
Like today's online journalistic entrepreneurs, being his own editor and boss allowed Izzy the freedom and space to parse out the distortions of government in detail.
A year before the Tonkin hoax, he wrote: "In this age of corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise." While most journalists "find their niche in some huge newspaper of magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone."
Bloggers battle today's McCarthyites who smear Iraq War opponents as un-American abettors of our country's enemies. Izzy battled the original Joe McCarthy, in issue after issue of his weekly.
Indeed, he launched his publication the same month – January 1953 – McCarthy became chair of the Senate Operations Committee, enhancing his powers of intimidation.
Izzy warned prophetically: "McCarthy is in a position to smear any government official who fails to do his bidding. With such daring and few scruples, McCarthy can make himself the most powerful single figure in Congress."
Three months later, he wrote: "The most subversive force in America today is Joe McCarthy. No one is so effectively importing alien conceptions into American government. No one is doing so much to damage the country's prestige abroad. . . .If 'subversion' is to be met by deportation, then it is time to deport McCarthy back to Wisconsin."
Not until 11 months later did Edward R. Murrow air his first report on McCarthy.
Today, online media critics and bloggers expose the bigotry and fallacy gushing forth from Fox News and talk radio and the Rev. Moon-owned Washington Times, long-edited by Wes Pruden Jr. They blog about MSM being stenographers to rightwing extremists.
When racists in Little Rock were obstructing court-ordered school desegregation in 1958, Izzy was on the scene reporting: "A staff correspondent in Little Rock quoted the Reverend Wesley Pruden the segregationist leader, as saying, 'The South will not accept this outrage, which a Communist-dominated government is trying to lay on us.' This was my introduction to a regional journalism which prints such statements matter-of-factly."
The Communist-dominated regime referred to by Pruden Sr. was headed by Eisenhower.
Izzy loved to tell the story of how he found – hiding in plain view in different editions of the New York Times – one-paragraph "shirrtail" wire stories indicating that our country's first underground nuclear test in Nevada in 1957 was detected in Toronto, Rome and Tokyo.
Months later, just as hawks in Washington were preparing to attack a test ban treaty with the Soviets on the basis that nuclear tests could not be detected more than 200 miles away, Izzy found a seismologist in the Commerce Department who told him the test had also been detected as far away as Alaska and Arkansas.
Izzy's reporting obstructed the government's lie before it could get its shoes on.
Starting out in his teens, Izzy was a daily reporter, editor and columnist. After moving to D.C. in 1940 to become Washington editor of The Nation, he exposed U.S. corporations still doing business with Hitler's Germany. He was one of the first to sound the alarm about the Nazi holocaust, referring in 1942 to "a murder of a people."
An anti-racist, he battled the all-white National Press Club over exclusion of black journalists.
Izzy's cantankerousness and "hound-dog tenacity" – in the words of his biographer– would make even the most stubborn blogger blush. Although he was a lifelong progressive, his journalistic hallmark was independence: "I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with independent journalism."
His writings show deep admiration for Franklin Roosevelt, yet his article on FDR's death criticized his "deplorable disrespect for the constitutional amenities" in resisting a reactionary Supreme Court that knocked down one New Deal bill after another.
He wrote books passionately supporting the birth of Israel, but strongly criticized it for mistreatment of Palestinians. He advocated peace and negotiations with the Soviet Union, while increasingly vocal in denouncing its rulers: "The worker [in Russia] is more exploited than in Western welfare states."
He despised racists, but fought for their free speech rights, and everyone's: "Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.''
That he marched to his own drummer can be seen in his dispatch from the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, in which he criticized "respectables" for muting "Negro militancy" into support of JFK's inadequate program, and referred to Martin Luther King as "a little too saccharine for my taste."
Born of immigrant parents, Izzy was an American patriot who worshipped the Bill of Rights: "You may think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive."
And he worshipped our country's tradition of press freedom: "There are few countries in which you can spit in the eye of the government and get away with it. It's not possible in Moscow."
But Izzy was never naïve about American traditions that threatened freedom, and he had a 5,000-page FBI spy file to prove it.
Today's muckraking bloggers are often belittled for working from their homes, far removed from the corridors of power. Izzy worked out of his home. If he were alive, he'd be applauding the Josh Marshalls and other independents, urging: Keep your distance from power.
"I made no claim to inside stuff. . . I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. . . I felt like a guerilla warrior, swooping down in surprise attack on a stuffy bureaucracy where it least expected independent inquiry.
"The reporter assigned to specific beats like the State Department or the Pentagon for a wire service or a big daily newspaper soon finds himself a captive. State and Pentagon have large press relations forces whose job it is to herd the press and shape the news. There are many ways to punish a reporter who gets out of line. . .
"But a reporter covering the whole capitol on his own – particularly if he is his own employer – is immune from these pressures."
Imagine the obstacles Izzy faced – did I mention his impaired eyesight and hearing? – launching a weekly and finding an audience at the height of McCarthy's witch hunts (even at $5 for an annual subscription).
Far fewer obstacles face today's bloggers who seek to follow in Izzy's footsteps – blessed as they are with relative freedom and this awesome research and outreach tool known as the Internet.
As these upstarts speak truth to power, I see Izzy Stone watching over them, from the heavens.
Jeff Cohen is the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. He first saw I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly at a D.C. peace march in 1969. Soon after Cohen launched the media watch group FAIR in 1986, Izzy Stone signed on to its first formal protest, a telegram to ABC News on the exclusion of progressive voices.
June 17, 2008
Editor's Note: In the days before the Internet, one of the great voices of independent journalism was I.F. Stone, whose simple newsletter challenged the conventional thinking of the day.
In this guest essay, media critic Jeff Cohen recalls Stone's contributions to the cause of journalism:
It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.
Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?
Well, yeah, but when I think of today's blunt, fact-based online hell-raisers, my mind quickly flashes on Izzy Stone. You may think of Josh Marshall or Glenn Greenwald or Arianna Huffington. I think of Izzy.
Before there was an Internet, Izzy Stone was doing the work we associate with today's best bloggers.
Like them, he was obsessed with citing original documents and texts. But before search engines, Izzy had to consume ten newspapers per day – and physically visit government archives and press offices, and personally pore over thousands of words in the Congressional Record.
That's how he repeatedly scooped the gullible, faux-objective MSM of his day in exposing government deceit, like that propelling the Vietnam War.
Izzy was the ultimate un-embedded reporter. His journalism was motivated by a simple maxim that resonates loudly in our era of Cheneys and Rumsfelds and WMD hoaxes: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."
Month after month from 1953 to 1969 I.F. Stone's Weekly (biweekly through 1971) exposed deceptions as fast as governments could spin them. His timely and timeless dispatches are gathered in an exceptional paperback, The Best of I.F. Stone.
In real time in August 1964, Izzy was virtually alone in challenging the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, an imaginary "unprovoked attack" on U.S. warships used by the Johnson administration to send several hundred thousand American troops into Vietnam.
How did Izzy do it? By citing international law texts and finding nuggets of truth in the Congressional Record of the Senate debate (no C-SPAN then) and in contradictory reporting in mainstream publications.
Izzy's expose began boldly: "The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public." He fumed at the credulous MSM: "The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen."
Only two senators, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Alaska's Ernest Gruening, had voted against the Tonkin Resolution; Izzy noted that the press had "dropped an Iron Curtain weeks ago on the antiwar speeches of Morse and Gruening."
Like today's online journalistic entrepreneurs, being his own editor and boss allowed Izzy the freedom and space to parse out the distortions of government in detail.
A year before the Tonkin hoax, he wrote: "In this age of corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise." While most journalists "find their niche in some huge newspaper of magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone."
Bloggers battle today's McCarthyites who smear Iraq War opponents as un-American abettors of our country's enemies. Izzy battled the original Joe McCarthy, in issue after issue of his weekly.
Indeed, he launched his publication the same month – January 1953 – McCarthy became chair of the Senate Operations Committee, enhancing his powers of intimidation.
Izzy warned prophetically: "McCarthy is in a position to smear any government official who fails to do his bidding. With such daring and few scruples, McCarthy can make himself the most powerful single figure in Congress."
Three months later, he wrote: "The most subversive force in America today is Joe McCarthy. No one is so effectively importing alien conceptions into American government. No one is doing so much to damage the country's prestige abroad. . . .If 'subversion' is to be met by deportation, then it is time to deport McCarthy back to Wisconsin."
Not until 11 months later did Edward R. Murrow air his first report on McCarthy.
Today, online media critics and bloggers expose the bigotry and fallacy gushing forth from Fox News and talk radio and the Rev. Moon-owned Washington Times, long-edited by Wes Pruden Jr. They blog about MSM being stenographers to rightwing extremists.
When racists in Little Rock were obstructing court-ordered school desegregation in 1958, Izzy was on the scene reporting: "A staff correspondent in Little Rock quoted the Reverend Wesley Pruden the segregationist leader, as saying, 'The South will not accept this outrage, which a Communist-dominated government is trying to lay on us.' This was my introduction to a regional journalism which prints such statements matter-of-factly."
The Communist-dominated regime referred to by Pruden Sr. was headed by Eisenhower.
Izzy loved to tell the story of how he found – hiding in plain view in different editions of the New York Times – one-paragraph "shirrtail" wire stories indicating that our country's first underground nuclear test in Nevada in 1957 was detected in Toronto, Rome and Tokyo.
Months later, just as hawks in Washington were preparing to attack a test ban treaty with the Soviets on the basis that nuclear tests could not be detected more than 200 miles away, Izzy found a seismologist in the Commerce Department who told him the test had also been detected as far away as Alaska and Arkansas.
Izzy's reporting obstructed the government's lie before it could get its shoes on.
Starting out in his teens, Izzy was a daily reporter, editor and columnist. After moving to D.C. in 1940 to become Washington editor of The Nation, he exposed U.S. corporations still doing business with Hitler's Germany. He was one of the first to sound the alarm about the Nazi holocaust, referring in 1942 to "a murder of a people."
An anti-racist, he battled the all-white National Press Club over exclusion of black journalists.
Izzy's cantankerousness and "hound-dog tenacity" – in the words of his biographer– would make even the most stubborn blogger blush. Although he was a lifelong progressive, his journalistic hallmark was independence: "I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with independent journalism."
His writings show deep admiration for Franklin Roosevelt, yet his article on FDR's death criticized his "deplorable disrespect for the constitutional amenities" in resisting a reactionary Supreme Court that knocked down one New Deal bill after another.
He wrote books passionately supporting the birth of Israel, but strongly criticized it for mistreatment of Palestinians. He advocated peace and negotiations with the Soviet Union, while increasingly vocal in denouncing its rulers: "The worker [in Russia] is more exploited than in Western welfare states."
He despised racists, but fought for their free speech rights, and everyone's: "Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.''
That he marched to his own drummer can be seen in his dispatch from the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, in which he criticized "respectables" for muting "Negro militancy" into support of JFK's inadequate program, and referred to Martin Luther King as "a little too saccharine for my taste."
Born of immigrant parents, Izzy was an American patriot who worshipped the Bill of Rights: "You may think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive."
And he worshipped our country's tradition of press freedom: "There are few countries in which you can spit in the eye of the government and get away with it. It's not possible in Moscow."
But Izzy was never naïve about American traditions that threatened freedom, and he had a 5,000-page FBI spy file to prove it.
Today's muckraking bloggers are often belittled for working from their homes, far removed from the corridors of power. Izzy worked out of his home. If he were alive, he'd be applauding the Josh Marshalls and other independents, urging: Keep your distance from power.
"I made no claim to inside stuff. . . I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. . . I felt like a guerilla warrior, swooping down in surprise attack on a stuffy bureaucracy where it least expected independent inquiry.
"The reporter assigned to specific beats like the State Department or the Pentagon for a wire service or a big daily newspaper soon finds himself a captive. State and Pentagon have large press relations forces whose job it is to herd the press and shape the news. There are many ways to punish a reporter who gets out of line. . .
"But a reporter covering the whole capitol on his own – particularly if he is his own employer – is immune from these pressures."
Imagine the obstacles Izzy faced – did I mention his impaired eyesight and hearing? – launching a weekly and finding an audience at the height of McCarthy's witch hunts (even at $5 for an annual subscription).
Far fewer obstacles face today's bloggers who seek to follow in Izzy's footsteps – blessed as they are with relative freedom and this awesome research and outreach tool known as the Internet.
As these upstarts speak truth to power, I see Izzy Stone watching over them, from the heavens.
Jeff Cohen is the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. He first saw I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly at a D.C. peace march in 1969. Soon after Cohen launched the media watch group FAIR in 1986, Izzy Stone signed on to its first formal protest, a telegram to ABC News on the exclusion of progressive voices.
Heating Up: The Battle for the Jewish voice and the Jewish soul (Young, Jewish and Angry)
'We see a sick hierarchically organized Jewish community…serving as a smokescreen to allow the ongoing genocide of a people'
David Mandelzys, an anti-Zionist Canadian Jew has recently written these words in a his article'Heating Up: The Battle for the Jewish voice and the Jewish soul.'.
While well-written, what's interesting about the article is the tone it's written in. Angry, impassioned, even contemptuous towards the existing Zionist 'community'.
It's a far cry from the polite and respectful tone with which British anti-Zionists address 'the community'. This might be simply Mr Mandelzys's style, or the style of debate in Canada – but it might signify something deeper. A lack of fear/respect might be no bad thing, when trying to create something new.
http://www.culturemagazine.ca/content/view/271/56/
Written by David Mandelzys, Photographs by Ryan Davies,
Dear Mom, Dad, your Zionist friends, and Bob Dylan too,
I've got news for you all: The times they are a changin'! Remember last Passover? Remember when we sat around the Seder table and listened to you rant about Israel`s victimhood? About how ethnic cleansing really isn't that bad? And about how if they try to kill the Jews this time, we will at least take them all with us? Remember the rolled eyes of my cousins and the looks we exchanged thinking you were all nuts?
These are the four questions we were thinking of:
1) Why, on this night we dedicate to remembering our own history as an oppressed people, do we justify Israel's oppression of the Palestinians?
2) Why, on this night when Israelis are free to celebrate, are the Palestinians locked down under curfew – as is done on most Jewish holidays?
3) Why, here in Canada, where we are a minority amongst a Christian majority, do we advocate for and support a 'Jewish State' in the Middle East, where the non-Jewish minority are treated as second class citizens?
4) Why should anyone think that just because we say 'next year in Jerusalem' at the end of our Seder, that we had a right to kick others out of their homes so that we could live there?
You see, our generation is different. We are not blind Zionist ideologues. We did not take the lesson of kill or be killed from the stories our grandparents told us about the Holocaust or the anti-Semitism they faced. Alongside our lessons about Zionism and about why the Holocaust meant that Jews need a Jewish state for themselves, we couldn't help but absorb the need to oppose racism, to fight oppression and to not justify the subjugation of one 'people' for the benefit of another.
At first, we may have believed your myths about 'Israel the good', about the Israel Defense Forces being the world's only 'moral' army, and about how it's not Israel but 'the Arabs' who don't want peace. But we have grown up now, and like our Christian peers who come to understand Santa Claus is not real, the growing majority of us have come to see myth of Israel the good as a relic of our childhood Chanukahs.
For those of us who have followed developments in the mainstream Jewish community, we see more to your ranting, too. We see a sick hierarchically organized Jewish community that is not only serving as a smokescreen to allow the ongoing genocide of a people; we also see the twisted irony that you, our parents who claim we need Israel as a safeguard from anti-Semitism, are actually putting us and the rest of World Jewry in danger. By tying our fate (and our children's) to that of the leadership of the dying American empire, you are setting us up as a scapegoat.
Israel is an offshore American army base and the Israeli leadership and its North American lobby are so in bed with the neo-cons that our community will be suffering consequences for years. Even worse, in Canada and the United States, the lobby has deluded itself into actually thinking it controls the hand that feeds it. The lobby happily plays the role of the dirty cop on the beat using underhanded (but not so secret) ways to try and eliminate what it sees as threats to Israel's support, or the lobby`s own domestic power. I'm sure that Harper, Bush, and their corporate masters are not disappointed that the targets the Israel lobby chooses for career or character assassination (in the media, academia, public life, etc.) typically line up with their own. But, what will happen if: Oil prices keep rising? The war in Iraq and Afghanistan keeps failing? Housing foreclosures keep increasing? And world anger at the West keeps growing?
The Jewish community's leadership certainly makes it easy enough to paint a picture that the Jews are behind it; sometimes they even gloat. Will it really be a surprise if, when shit hits the fan, our supposed allies in the US/Canadian elite cut Israel's strings and point the blame at home towards Jews?
Hypotheticals aside, luckily this too is changing! From the disenchanted, once isolated Jews, a new community is rising. Remember the article I wrote on "The Fall of Zionism" last October? Remember how you thought I was a dreamer and that there was no way a threat to the Zionist control of our community could ever take hold? Well, a lot has happened in the past eight months. The kids are coming home! All those 'self-hating' Jews who isolated themselves from the community not because of a dislike for our culture, heritage, or religion, but because they were told to leave after speaking their mind on the oppression of the Palestinian people, are finding each other, organizing, and coming back.
In Canada, for example, there is a new national umbrella organization called the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC), which represents Jews who are opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The ACJC was launched in March when internationally renowned author, journalist, keynote speaker and Canadian Jew Naomi Klein kicked off a national conference that brought together over 100 activist Jews representing 23 different Canadian Jewish groups. The purpose of the ACJC is to provide a counterweight to Jewish organizations that serve as apologists for Israel's crimes, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The ACJC has since put action to words. Recently, for example, it lent support to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers when it became the first national Union in North America to courageously pass a resolution supporting the Palestinian campaign for a Boycott of Israel, and recognizing that Israel has become an apartheid state.
Likewise, in May the ACJC, along with other anti-occupation Jewish groups across North America and the world, heeded the call of the Palestinian people to declare the 60th anniversary of the Naqba (disaster) as No Time to Celebrate (this is a common slogan being used in protest of Israel's celebrations). Protests were organized worldwide, and in Canada and the United States Jews protested alongside Palestinians and other concerned citizens. In San Francisco, twenty Jews were (unjustly) arrested trying to make themselves heard as Jews opposed to Israel`s crimes. In Britain, over one hundred Jews signed an open letter published in The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom's leading newspapers, declaring they would not celebrate Israel's birthday. In Paris, French Jews hung the Palestinian flag on the Eiffel Tower in protest. Here in Canada's capital of Ottawa, Jews, Palestinians, and other concerned individuals formed a one hundred person-strong
silent protest outside the official Israel celebrations at the Convention Center on May 8th, and then repeated it a few weeks later at another event at the National Arts Center on May 20th. Despite the money and glamour being thrown into making 60 years of Israeli oppression a propaganda campaign to whitewash Israel's crimes, Jews around the world are promising not to celebrate (one US-based online pledge not to celebrate has over 500 Jewish signatures). The actions I am describing did not have millions of dollars for publicity like the official events organized by the Jewish community's elites. Instead, they grew through grassroot networks and traveled by word-of-mouth from committed activist Jew to committed activist Jew. The Jews taking part in these events are the ones who are informed and willing to put themselves on the line to oppose the mainstream Jewish community's official position, and I am growing increasingly confident that their support runs deep.
This letter may sound angry, and at some points it is. It upsets me to hear our Passover conversations, and I won't just quietly roll my eyes anymore. But the reason for that is love and respect. We are forming a new community, with a humanist core that ties us together strongly. Seders are being held that tell the story of the Palestinian enslavement along with that of our own. Events are being held where Jews celebrate Jewish culture from a place that recognizes how our history gives us a responsibility to speak out against oppression. I will continue to celebrate my heritage as part of our family, just like all those supposed 'self-hating' Jews will celebrate with me, as Jews and as part of the Jewish community. We are committed to justice, and through this we are finding our Jewish souls. And when you are ready to join the multitudes of other Jews opposing Israeli oppression, our door will be wide open.
Love,
your Young Non-Zionist Kids
Love,
your Young Non-Zionist Kids
The Hard Choice Barak Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
As articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn, and Uri Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel Lobby Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.
Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East.
As Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and a modern air force and missiles supplied by the US, the idea that Israel needs American protection from Iran is a fantasy. All Israel needs to do in order to be safe and to live in peace is to stop stealing the West Bank and to drop its designs on southern Lebanon. Obama is too smart not to know that US foreign policy has been Shanghaied by the Lobby not in order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel's territorial expansion.
Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front as well. Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as his economic advisors--Bill Clinton's Treasury Robert Rubin and Rubin associate Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies that benefit Wall Street, CEOs, and large retailers at the expense of the economic well being and careers of millions of Americans.
As a result of offshoring, good jobs in America are disappearing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics job figures make it totally clear that the US economy has ceased creating net new middle class jobs in the private economy in the 21st century.
Stressing higher returns to shareholders, Wall Street pressures corporations to move their operations abroad. Wal-Mart tells its American suppliers to "meet the Chinese price" or else, a price that US firms can meet only by offshoring their operations to China.
Every job and product that is offshored increases the US trade deficit and lowers US GDP. It is a losing game for America that rewards the overpaid elite of Wall Street and corporate America, while dismantling the ladders of upward mobility.
By enlarging the trade deficit, offshoring erodes the reserve currency role of the dollar, the real basis of US power. Now that US imports exceed US industrial production, it is unlikely that the US trade deficit can be closed except by a sharp reduction in US consumption, which implies a drop in US living standards. If the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US government will not be able to finance its budget and trade deficits.
Where is the hope when Obama endorses a foreign policy that benefits only Israeli territorial expansion and an economic policy that benefits only multimillionaires and billionaires?
The answer is that Obama's election would signify the electorate's rejection of Bush and the Republicans. Considering the cowardice of the Democratic Congress and its reluctance to hold a criminal regime accountable, electoral defeat is the only accountability that the Bush Republicans are likely to experience.
It is not sufficient accountability, but at least it is some accountability.
If the Republicans win the election and escape accountability, the damage Republicans have done to the US Constitution, civil liberty, and a free society will be irreversible. The Bush Regime and its totalitarians have openly violated US law against spying on Americans without warrants and US and international laws against torture. The regime and its totalitarians have violated the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold. Bush's attorney general Gonzales even asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to American citizens.
When federal courts acted to stop the regime's unconstitutional practices and abuse of prisoners, the Republicans passed legislation to overturn the court rulings. The Republican Party has shown beyond all doubt that it holds the US Constitution in total contempt.
Today the Republican Party stands for unaccountable executive power.
To reelect such a party is to murder liberty in America.
The June 12 Supreme Court decision pulled America back from the abyss of tyranny. For years hundreds of innocent people have been held by the Bush regime without charges, a handful of which were set to be tried in a kangaroo military tribunal in which they could be convicted on the basis of secret evidence and confession extracted by torture.
The Court ruled 5-4 that detainees have the right to appeal to civilian courts for habeas corpus protection. The Bush Republicans claiming "extraordinary times" had created a gestapo system in which the government could accuse, without presenting any evidence, a person of being a threat and on that basis alone imprison him indefinitely. Justice Anthony Kennedy reminded the Republican Brownshirts that "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
Bush's current attorney general, Michael Mukassey, said he would proceed with his kangaroo trials.
President Bush indicated that he was inclined to again seek to overturn the Court with a law.
Brownshirt Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he would draft a constitutional amendment to restore the executive branch's tyrannical power.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that the Supreme Court decision protecting habeas corpus "is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
The four Supreme Court justices (Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas) who voted for tyranny in America are all Republicans. They all came out of the Federalist Society, a highly subversive group of right-wing lawyers who are determined to elevate the powers of the executive branch above Congress and the Supreme Court.
The Republican Party has morphed into a Brownshirt Party. The party worships "energy in the executive." If the Brownshirt Republicans are reelected, they only need one more Supreme Court appointment in order to destroy American liberty.
That is what is at stake in the November election. As bad as Obama is on important issues, his election will signal rejection of the tyranny to which the Republicans are committed.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
As articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn, and Uri Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel Lobby Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.
Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East.
As Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and a modern air force and missiles supplied by the US, the idea that Israel needs American protection from Iran is a fantasy. All Israel needs to do in order to be safe and to live in peace is to stop stealing the West Bank and to drop its designs on southern Lebanon. Obama is too smart not to know that US foreign policy has been Shanghaied by the Lobby not in order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel's territorial expansion.
Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front as well. Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as his economic advisors--Bill Clinton's Treasury Robert Rubin and Rubin associate Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies that benefit Wall Street, CEOs, and large retailers at the expense of the economic well being and careers of millions of Americans.
As a result of offshoring, good jobs in America are disappearing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics job figures make it totally clear that the US economy has ceased creating net new middle class jobs in the private economy in the 21st century.
Stressing higher returns to shareholders, Wall Street pressures corporations to move their operations abroad. Wal-Mart tells its American suppliers to "meet the Chinese price" or else, a price that US firms can meet only by offshoring their operations to China.
Every job and product that is offshored increases the US trade deficit and lowers US GDP. It is a losing game for America that rewards the overpaid elite of Wall Street and corporate America, while dismantling the ladders of upward mobility.
By enlarging the trade deficit, offshoring erodes the reserve currency role of the dollar, the real basis of US power. Now that US imports exceed US industrial production, it is unlikely that the US trade deficit can be closed except by a sharp reduction in US consumption, which implies a drop in US living standards. If the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US government will not be able to finance its budget and trade deficits.
Where is the hope when Obama endorses a foreign policy that benefits only Israeli territorial expansion and an economic policy that benefits only multimillionaires and billionaires?
The answer is that Obama's election would signify the electorate's rejection of Bush and the Republicans. Considering the cowardice of the Democratic Congress and its reluctance to hold a criminal regime accountable, electoral defeat is the only accountability that the Bush Republicans are likely to experience.
It is not sufficient accountability, but at least it is some accountability.
If the Republicans win the election and escape accountability, the damage Republicans have done to the US Constitution, civil liberty, and a free society will be irreversible. The Bush Regime and its totalitarians have openly violated US law against spying on Americans without warrants and US and international laws against torture. The regime and its totalitarians have violated the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold. Bush's attorney general Gonzales even asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to American citizens.
When federal courts acted to stop the regime's unconstitutional practices and abuse of prisoners, the Republicans passed legislation to overturn the court rulings. The Republican Party has shown beyond all doubt that it holds the US Constitution in total contempt.
Today the Republican Party stands for unaccountable executive power.
To reelect such a party is to murder liberty in America.
The June 12 Supreme Court decision pulled America back from the abyss of tyranny. For years hundreds of innocent people have been held by the Bush regime without charges, a handful of which were set to be tried in a kangaroo military tribunal in which they could be convicted on the basis of secret evidence and confession extracted by torture.
The Court ruled 5-4 that detainees have the right to appeal to civilian courts for habeas corpus protection. The Bush Republicans claiming "extraordinary times" had created a gestapo system in which the government could accuse, without presenting any evidence, a person of being a threat and on that basis alone imprison him indefinitely. Justice Anthony Kennedy reminded the Republican Brownshirts that "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
Bush's current attorney general, Michael Mukassey, said he would proceed with his kangaroo trials.
President Bush indicated that he was inclined to again seek to overturn the Court with a law.
Brownshirt Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he would draft a constitutional amendment to restore the executive branch's tyrannical power.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that the Supreme Court decision protecting habeas corpus "is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
The four Supreme Court justices (Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas) who voted for tyranny in America are all Republicans. They all came out of the Federalist Society, a highly subversive group of right-wing lawyers who are determined to elevate the powers of the executive branch above Congress and the Supreme Court.
The Republican Party has morphed into a Brownshirt Party. The party worships "energy in the executive." If the Brownshirt Republicans are reelected, they only need one more Supreme Court appointment in order to destroy American liberty.
That is what is at stake in the November election. As bad as Obama is on important issues, his election will signal rejection of the tyranny to which the Republicans are committed.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
John McCain's Chilling Project for America
by Dr. Elliot Cohen
Global Research, June 15, 2008
truthdig.com - 2008-06-12
John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. The credo of this group is "the end justifies the means," and the end of establishing the United States as the world's sole superpower justifies, in its estimation, anything from military control over the information on the Internet to the use of genocidal biological weapons. Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain administration, if one comes to power, to nurture it.
The Road Map to War
The blueprint for this "new order" was drafted in February 1992, at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration when Defense Department staffers Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad, acting under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, drafted the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG). This document, also known as the "Wolfowitz Doctrine," was an unofficial, internal document that advocated massive increases in defense spending for purposes of strategic proliferation and buildup of the military in order to establish the pre-eminence of the United States as the world's sole superpower. Advocating pre-emptive attacks with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, it proclaimed that "the U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests." The document was also quite clear about what should be the United States' main objective in the Middle East, especially with regard to Iraq and Iran, which was to "remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." The Wolfowitz Doctrine was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post, which published excerpts from it. Amid a public outcry, President George H.W. Bush retracted the document, and it was substantially revised.
The original mission of the Wolfowitz Doctrine was not lost, however. In 1997, William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a nongovernment political action organization that sought to develop and advocate for the militant, geopolitical tenets contained in the Wolfowitz Doctrine. PNAC's original members included Wolfowitz, Cheney, Khalilzad, Libby, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, William J. Bennett, and other soon-to-be high officers in the Bush administration.
McCain's Ties to PNAC
John McCain's connection to PNAC can be traced back to before its formation in 1997. In fact, he was president of the New Citizenship Project, founded by Kristol in 1994. This organization was parent to PNAC, and served as its chief fundraising organ.
McCain also worked cooperatively with PNAC and Wolfowitz in attempting to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. In 1998, he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act—drafted by PNAC—which decreed "regime change" in Iraq to be U.S. policy, and which appropriated $97 million in U.S. military aid to the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The INC was a group of anti-Hussein Iraqi militants whose purpose was to instigate a national uprising against Hussein. It was led by Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi informant whose subsequent faulty intelligence—claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida—was used to sell the Iraq war to the American public. In 2004, in response to accusations that he deliberately misled U.S. intelligence agencies, Chalabi glibly stated, "We are heroes in error."
McCain also was co-chair (with Sen. Joseph Lieberman) of The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI). Established by PNAC in late 2002, this committee continued to finance Chalabi's INC with millions of taxpayer dollars, until shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when it was discontinued. In 2004, McCain became a signatory of PNAC, ironically signing on to a PNAC letter condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy for its return to the "rhetoric of militarism and empire."
McCain has accordingly been a foot soldier for PNAC from its inception, and, although this organization is no longer in existence, its ideology and its signatories (many of whom now serve as advisers to the McCain presidential campaign) are still very much active.
The Master Plan
In September 2000, prior to the presidential election that year, PNAC carefully formulated its chief tenets in a document called Rebuilding America's Defenses (RAD). This document, which was intended to guide the incoming administration, had a substantial influence on the policies set by the Bush administration and is likely to do the same for a McCain administration if McCain becomes president. Here are some of the recommendations of the RAD report:
Fighting and winning multiple, simultaneous major wars
Among its core missions was the rebuilding of America's defenses sufficient to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." And it explicitly advocated sending troops into Iraq regardless of whether Saddam Hussein was in power. According to RAD, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The RAD report also admonished, "Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region." Therefore, it had both Iraq and Iran in its sight as zones of multiple, simultaneous major wars for purposes of advancing "longstanding American interests in the region"—in particular, its oil.
McCain's recent chanting of "bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" to the beat of an old Beach Boys tune, his suggestion that the war with Iraq might last 100 years and his recent statement that the war in Afghanistan might also last 100 years—all of these pronouncements are clearly in concert with the PNAC mission to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars."
RAD also stressed the need to have additional forces equipped to handle ongoing "constabulary" duties such as enforcement of no-fly zones and other operations that fell short of full theater wars. It claimed that unless the military was so equipped, its ability to fight and win multiple, simultaneous wars would be impaired. Along these same lines, McCain has recently stated, ''It's time to end the disingenuous practice of stating that we have a two-war strategy when we are paying for only a one-war military. Either we must change our strategy—and accept the risks—or we must properly fund and structure our military.''
Designing and deploying global missile defense systems
RAD also emphasized, as an additional core value, the need to "transform U.S. forces to exploit the 'revolution in military affairs.' " This included the design and deployment of a global ballistic missile defense system consisting of land-, sea-, air- and space-based components said to be capable of shielding the U.S. and its allies from "limited strikes" in the future by "rogue" nations such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran.
Along these lines, McCain has maintained that a ballistic missile defense system was "indispensable"—even if this meant reneging on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 at the expense of angering the Russians. Unfortunately, while RAD acknowledged the "limited" efficacy of such a weapons system (presumably because it cannot realistically provide a bulletproof shield, especially against large-scale missile attacks), neither it nor McCain addressed the problem that deployment of such a system could be destabilizing: It could encourage escalation, instead of de-escalation, of ballistic missile arsenals by nations that fear becoming sitting ducks, and might even provoke a pre-emptive strike. Further, there is still the question of whether the creation of such costly, national defense shields is even technologically feasible.
The use of genocidal biological warfare for political expediency
Not only did RAD advocate the design and deployment of defensive weaponry, it also stressed the updating of conventional offensive weapons including cruise missiles along with stealthy strike aircraft and longer-range Air Force strike aircraft. But it went further in its offensive posture by envisioning and supporting the use of genotype-specific biological warfare. According to RAD, "… advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." In this chilling statement, a double standard is evident. In the hands of al-Qaida, such genocidal weapons would belong to "the realm of terror," but in those of the U.S., they would be "politically useful tools."
Rejection of the United Nations
PNAC's double standard is also inherent in its rejection of the idea of a cooperative, neutral effort among the nations of the world to address world problems, including the problem of Iraq. "Nor can the United States assume a UN-like stance of neutrality," states the RAD report. "The preponderance of American power is so great and its global interests so wide that it cannot pretend to be indifferent to the political outcome in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf or even when it deploys forces in Africa. Finally, these missions demand forces basically configured for combat." Accordingly, a McCain administration founded on a PNAC platform of self-interested exercise of force would oppose giving the United Nations any central role in setting and implementing foreign affairs policy.
Control of space and cyberspace
PNAC's quest for global domination transcends any literal meaning of the geopolitical, and extends also to the control, rather than the sharing, of outer space. It also has serious implications for cyber freedom. Thus the RAD report states, "Much as control of the high seas—and the protection of international commerce—defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new 'international commons' be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the 'infosphere' will find it difficult to exert global political leadership. ... Access to and use of cyberspace and the Internet are emerging elements in global commerce, politics and power. Any nation wishing to assert itself globally must take account of this other new 'global commons.' "
There is a difference between protecting the Internet from a cyber attack and controlling it. The former is defensive while the latter is offensive. But RAD also advocated going on the offensive. It stated that "an offensive capability could offer America's military and political leaders an invaluable tool in disabling an adversary in a decisive manner."
However, state control of cyberspace for political purposes can have serious implications for the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. The Bush administration has already engaged in mass illegal spying on the phone and e-mail messages of millions of Americans through its National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. As a result of copying these messages and depositing them into an NSA computer database, it began to assemble a massive "Total Information Awareness" computer network. The FBI has also begun to develop and integrate such personal data with a biometric database that includes digital iris prints and facial images. Combine this with other computerized databases including credit card information, banking records and health files, and the result is an incredible ability to exercise power and control over anyone deemed by a political leader to be an "adversary"—including journalists, political opponents and others who might not see eye to eye with the administration.
In concert with the PNAC mission of control over cyberspace, McCain has supported making warrantless spying on American citizens legal. When asked if he believed that Bush's warrantless surveillance program was legal, McCain responded, "You know, I don't think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this out. ... I think they will get that authority, whatever is reasonable and needed, and increased abilities to monitor communications are clearly in order."
Consistent with his conviction that such extended powers should be granted to the president, McCain has also recently voted for Senate Bill S.2248, which vacates substantial civil liberties protections included in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In contrast to the 1978 FISA, S.2248 would allow the president, acting through the attorney general, to spy on the phone and e-mail communications of Americans without individual court warrants or the need to judicially show probable cause.
Despite the fact that McCain has said that Bush's NSA spying program was not legal, he has also supported granting retroactive legal immunity to the telecommunication companies (such as AT&T and Verizon) that helped Bush illegally spy on millions of Americans. This means that he has openly admitted that the Bush administration acted unlawfully in eavesdropping on Americans' phone and e-mail messages, while at the same time opted for taking away their legal right to redress this violation. And this unequivocally means that McCain is prepared to allow executive authority to trump the rule of law.
Meet the McCain Team
Given John McCain's firm allegiance to the core missions of PNAC, it should come as no surprise that many of the old PNAC guard have shown up as foreign policy advisers in McCain's current presidential campaign, and are likely re-emerge as high officials in his administration if he becomes president. Here are snapshots of some of these potential members of a McCain Cabinet, giving their PNAC profiles, their advisory capacities in the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and their politics.
William Kristol
Editor and founder of Washington-based political magazine, Weekly Standard.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has consistently been wrong in his foreign policy analyses regarding Iraq. For example, on March 5, 2003, he stated, "I think we'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq."
Robert Kagan
Served in State Department in Reagan administration on Policy Planning Staff.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has defended global expansionism by claiming it is an American tradition: "Americans' belief in the possibility of global transformation—the 'messianic' impulse—is and always has been the more dominant strain in the nation's character."
Randy Scheunemann
Former adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Co-director and executive director of Committee for Liberation of Iraq.
Defense and foreign policy coordinator.
With regard to recent National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003, stated "a careful reading of the NIE indicates that it is misleading." And he claimed that the NIE harmed our efforts to achieve a "greater diplomatic consensus" to crack down on Iran.
James Woolsey
Director of CIA, Clinton administration, 1993-1995. (Reported to have met only twice with Clinton during time as CIA chief.)
PNAC signatory.
Energy and national security adviser.
Speaking to a group of college students in 2003 about Iraq, he stated that "… the United States is engaged in World War IV." Described the Cold War as the third world war. Then said, "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."
John R. Bolton
Former U.S. ambassador to U.N. (Nomination to U.N. rejected by Senate, but George W. Bush put him in place on a recess appointment. Name floated for possible secretary of state for McCain.
PNAC director.
Ardent supporter of McCain for president in 2009.
Publicly derided the United Nations: In 1994, he stated "there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along." Advocates attacking Iran.
Robert B. Zollick
President, World Bank.
PNAC signatory.
Announced in 2006 he would be joining McCain presidential campaign for domestic and foreign policy but instead replaced Wolfowitz as president of World Bank in 2007.
Has touted virtues of corporate globalization under the rubric of "comprehensive free trade." But as Kevin Watkins, head researcher for Oxfan, stated, he pays no heed to the effects of the "blind pursuit of US economic and corporate special interests" on the world's poor.
Gary Schmitt
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (home to other PNAC members including Wolfowitz and Pearle.)
PNAC director.
Foreign policy adviser.
Defended warrantless eavesdropping on Americans by claiming that Constitution "created a unitary chief executive. That chief executive could, in times of war or emergency, act with the decisiveness, dispatch and, yes, secrecy, needed to protect the country and its citizens."
Richard L. Armitage
Former deputy secretary of state in George W. Bush administration.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
By his own admission, was responsible for leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame's CIA identity to the press. Allegedly involved in Iran-Contra affair during Reagan administration.
Max Boot
Council on Foreign Relations.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
Stating that U.S. should "unambiguously ... embrace its imperial role," has advocated attacking other Middle East countries in addition to Iraq and Iran, including Syria. Said McCain's "bellicose aura" could "scare the snot out of our enemies," who "would be more afraid to mess with him" than with other then-potential presidential candidates.
Henry A. Kissinger
President Nixon's secretary of state.
Embraces expansionist power politics.
Consultant.
Played major role in secret bombings of Cambodia during Nixon administration as well as having had alleged involvement in covert assassination plots and human rights violations in Latin America.
What's in Store for Us if McCain Becomes President
That McCain has surrounded himself with such like-minded advisers who support the narrow PNAC agenda speaks to his unwillingness to hear and consider alternative perspectives. In fact, six out of 10 civilian foreign advisers to McCain are PNAC veterans. Even the newly appointed deputy communications director of the McCain campaign, Michael Goldfard, has been a research associate for PNAC. A die-hard adherent of the "unitary authority" of the chief executive, he recently stated that the framers of the United States Constitution advocated an "executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war."
Add to this list other major PNAC figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Dick Cheney who would probably play a significant role in a McCain administration and it is clear in what direction this nation would be moving.
A McCain administration would be likely to:
· Invest incredible amounts of money in sustaining multiple, simultaneous wars overseas at the expense of neglecting pressing concerns at home, including the economy, health care, the environment and education.
· Stockpile nuclear weapons, while seeking to prohibit its adversaries from having them.
· Attempt to shield the U.S. with a multilayered missile defense system based on land, at sea, in the air and in space, while demanding that nations that are not its allies become sitting ducks.
· Strive to develop more potent chemical and biological weapons—not to mention the genotype-specific variety, while at the same time claiming to be fighting a "war on terror."
· Legalize "Total Information Awareness"—going through all Americans' phone calls, e-mail messages and other personal records without needing probable cause.
· Take control of the Internet, globally using it as an offensive political weapon—while claiming to be spreading democracy throughout the world.
· Dispense with checks and balances in favor of the "unitary executive authority" of the president.
· Alienate nations that refuse to join our war coalitions.
· Deny that there is (or can be) a United Nations.
A McCain administration would rule by fear, perceive right in terms of military might and subscribe to the idea of "do as I say and not as I do." As a consequence, instead of rebuilding the image of America as a model of justice and civility, it would further sully respect for this nation throughout the world.
Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D., is a political analyst and media critic. His most recent book is "The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship." He was first-prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.
Global Research, June 15, 2008
truthdig.com - 2008-06-12
John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. The credo of this group is "the end justifies the means," and the end of establishing the United States as the world's sole superpower justifies, in its estimation, anything from military control over the information on the Internet to the use of genocidal biological weapons. Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain administration, if one comes to power, to nurture it.
The Road Map to War
The blueprint for this "new order" was drafted in February 1992, at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration when Defense Department staffers Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad, acting under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, drafted the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG). This document, also known as the "Wolfowitz Doctrine," was an unofficial, internal document that advocated massive increases in defense spending for purposes of strategic proliferation and buildup of the military in order to establish the pre-eminence of the United States as the world's sole superpower. Advocating pre-emptive attacks with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, it proclaimed that "the U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests." The document was also quite clear about what should be the United States' main objective in the Middle East, especially with regard to Iraq and Iran, which was to "remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." The Wolfowitz Doctrine was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post, which published excerpts from it. Amid a public outcry, President George H.W. Bush retracted the document, and it was substantially revised.
The original mission of the Wolfowitz Doctrine was not lost, however. In 1997, William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a nongovernment political action organization that sought to develop and advocate for the militant, geopolitical tenets contained in the Wolfowitz Doctrine. PNAC's original members included Wolfowitz, Cheney, Khalilzad, Libby, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, William J. Bennett, and other soon-to-be high officers in the Bush administration.
McCain's Ties to PNAC
John McCain's connection to PNAC can be traced back to before its formation in 1997. In fact, he was president of the New Citizenship Project, founded by Kristol in 1994. This organization was parent to PNAC, and served as its chief fundraising organ.
McCain also worked cooperatively with PNAC and Wolfowitz in attempting to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. In 1998, he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act—drafted by PNAC—which decreed "regime change" in Iraq to be U.S. policy, and which appropriated $97 million in U.S. military aid to the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The INC was a group of anti-Hussein Iraqi militants whose purpose was to instigate a national uprising against Hussein. It was led by Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi informant whose subsequent faulty intelligence—claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida—was used to sell the Iraq war to the American public. In 2004, in response to accusations that he deliberately misled U.S. intelligence agencies, Chalabi glibly stated, "We are heroes in error."
McCain also was co-chair (with Sen. Joseph Lieberman) of The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI). Established by PNAC in late 2002, this committee continued to finance Chalabi's INC with millions of taxpayer dollars, until shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when it was discontinued. In 2004, McCain became a signatory of PNAC, ironically signing on to a PNAC letter condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy for its return to the "rhetoric of militarism and empire."
McCain has accordingly been a foot soldier for PNAC from its inception, and, although this organization is no longer in existence, its ideology and its signatories (many of whom now serve as advisers to the McCain presidential campaign) are still very much active.
The Master Plan
In September 2000, prior to the presidential election that year, PNAC carefully formulated its chief tenets in a document called Rebuilding America's Defenses (RAD). This document, which was intended to guide the incoming administration, had a substantial influence on the policies set by the Bush administration and is likely to do the same for a McCain administration if McCain becomes president. Here are some of the recommendations of the RAD report:
Fighting and winning multiple, simultaneous major wars
Among its core missions was the rebuilding of America's defenses sufficient to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." And it explicitly advocated sending troops into Iraq regardless of whether Saddam Hussein was in power. According to RAD, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The RAD report also admonished, "Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region." Therefore, it had both Iraq and Iran in its sight as zones of multiple, simultaneous major wars for purposes of advancing "longstanding American interests in the region"—in particular, its oil.
McCain's recent chanting of "bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" to the beat of an old Beach Boys tune, his suggestion that the war with Iraq might last 100 years and his recent statement that the war in Afghanistan might also last 100 years—all of these pronouncements are clearly in concert with the PNAC mission to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars."
RAD also stressed the need to have additional forces equipped to handle ongoing "constabulary" duties such as enforcement of no-fly zones and other operations that fell short of full theater wars. It claimed that unless the military was so equipped, its ability to fight and win multiple, simultaneous wars would be impaired. Along these same lines, McCain has recently stated, ''It's time to end the disingenuous practice of stating that we have a two-war strategy when we are paying for only a one-war military. Either we must change our strategy—and accept the risks—or we must properly fund and structure our military.''
Designing and deploying global missile defense systems
RAD also emphasized, as an additional core value, the need to "transform U.S. forces to exploit the 'revolution in military affairs.' " This included the design and deployment of a global ballistic missile defense system consisting of land-, sea-, air- and space-based components said to be capable of shielding the U.S. and its allies from "limited strikes" in the future by "rogue" nations such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran.
Along these lines, McCain has maintained that a ballistic missile defense system was "indispensable"—even if this meant reneging on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 at the expense of angering the Russians. Unfortunately, while RAD acknowledged the "limited" efficacy of such a weapons system (presumably because it cannot realistically provide a bulletproof shield, especially against large-scale missile attacks), neither it nor McCain addressed the problem that deployment of such a system could be destabilizing: It could encourage escalation, instead of de-escalation, of ballistic missile arsenals by nations that fear becoming sitting ducks, and might even provoke a pre-emptive strike. Further, there is still the question of whether the creation of such costly, national defense shields is even technologically feasible.
The use of genocidal biological warfare for political expediency
Not only did RAD advocate the design and deployment of defensive weaponry, it also stressed the updating of conventional offensive weapons including cruise missiles along with stealthy strike aircraft and longer-range Air Force strike aircraft. But it went further in its offensive posture by envisioning and supporting the use of genotype-specific biological warfare. According to RAD, "… advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." In this chilling statement, a double standard is evident. In the hands of al-Qaida, such genocidal weapons would belong to "the realm of terror," but in those of the U.S., they would be "politically useful tools."
Rejection of the United Nations
PNAC's double standard is also inherent in its rejection of the idea of a cooperative, neutral effort among the nations of the world to address world problems, including the problem of Iraq. "Nor can the United States assume a UN-like stance of neutrality," states the RAD report. "The preponderance of American power is so great and its global interests so wide that it cannot pretend to be indifferent to the political outcome in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf or even when it deploys forces in Africa. Finally, these missions demand forces basically configured for combat." Accordingly, a McCain administration founded on a PNAC platform of self-interested exercise of force would oppose giving the United Nations any central role in setting and implementing foreign affairs policy.
Control of space and cyberspace
PNAC's quest for global domination transcends any literal meaning of the geopolitical, and extends also to the control, rather than the sharing, of outer space. It also has serious implications for cyber freedom. Thus the RAD report states, "Much as control of the high seas—and the protection of international commerce—defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new 'international commons' be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the 'infosphere' will find it difficult to exert global political leadership. ... Access to and use of cyberspace and the Internet are emerging elements in global commerce, politics and power. Any nation wishing to assert itself globally must take account of this other new 'global commons.' "
There is a difference between protecting the Internet from a cyber attack and controlling it. The former is defensive while the latter is offensive. But RAD also advocated going on the offensive. It stated that "an offensive capability could offer America's military and political leaders an invaluable tool in disabling an adversary in a decisive manner."
However, state control of cyberspace for political purposes can have serious implications for the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. The Bush administration has already engaged in mass illegal spying on the phone and e-mail messages of millions of Americans through its National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. As a result of copying these messages and depositing them into an NSA computer database, it began to assemble a massive "Total Information Awareness" computer network. The FBI has also begun to develop and integrate such personal data with a biometric database that includes digital iris prints and facial images. Combine this with other computerized databases including credit card information, banking records and health files, and the result is an incredible ability to exercise power and control over anyone deemed by a political leader to be an "adversary"—including journalists, political opponents and others who might not see eye to eye with the administration.
In concert with the PNAC mission of control over cyberspace, McCain has supported making warrantless spying on American citizens legal. When asked if he believed that Bush's warrantless surveillance program was legal, McCain responded, "You know, I don't think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this out. ... I think they will get that authority, whatever is reasonable and needed, and increased abilities to monitor communications are clearly in order."
Consistent with his conviction that such extended powers should be granted to the president, McCain has also recently voted for Senate Bill S.2248, which vacates substantial civil liberties protections included in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In contrast to the 1978 FISA, S.2248 would allow the president, acting through the attorney general, to spy on the phone and e-mail communications of Americans without individual court warrants or the need to judicially show probable cause.
Despite the fact that McCain has said that Bush's NSA spying program was not legal, he has also supported granting retroactive legal immunity to the telecommunication companies (such as AT&T and Verizon) that helped Bush illegally spy on millions of Americans. This means that he has openly admitted that the Bush administration acted unlawfully in eavesdropping on Americans' phone and e-mail messages, while at the same time opted for taking away their legal right to redress this violation. And this unequivocally means that McCain is prepared to allow executive authority to trump the rule of law.
Meet the McCain Team
Given John McCain's firm allegiance to the core missions of PNAC, it should come as no surprise that many of the old PNAC guard have shown up as foreign policy advisers in McCain's current presidential campaign, and are likely re-emerge as high officials in his administration if he becomes president. Here are snapshots of some of these potential members of a McCain Cabinet, giving their PNAC profiles, their advisory capacities in the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and their politics.
William Kristol
Editor and founder of Washington-based political magazine, Weekly Standard.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has consistently been wrong in his foreign policy analyses regarding Iraq. For example, on March 5, 2003, he stated, "I think we'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq."
Robert Kagan
Served in State Department in Reagan administration on Policy Planning Staff.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has defended global expansionism by claiming it is an American tradition: "Americans' belief in the possibility of global transformation—the 'messianic' impulse—is and always has been the more dominant strain in the nation's character."
Randy Scheunemann
Former adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Co-director and executive director of Committee for Liberation of Iraq.
Defense and foreign policy coordinator.
With regard to recent National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003, stated "a careful reading of the NIE indicates that it is misleading." And he claimed that the NIE harmed our efforts to achieve a "greater diplomatic consensus" to crack down on Iran.
James Woolsey
Director of CIA, Clinton administration, 1993-1995. (Reported to have met only twice with Clinton during time as CIA chief.)
PNAC signatory.
Energy and national security adviser.
Speaking to a group of college students in 2003 about Iraq, he stated that "… the United States is engaged in World War IV." Described the Cold War as the third world war. Then said, "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."
John R. Bolton
Former U.S. ambassador to U.N. (Nomination to U.N. rejected by Senate, but George W. Bush put him in place on a recess appointment. Name floated for possible secretary of state for McCain.
PNAC director.
Ardent supporter of McCain for president in 2009.
Publicly derided the United Nations: In 1994, he stated "there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along." Advocates attacking Iran.
Robert B. Zollick
President, World Bank.
PNAC signatory.
Announced in 2006 he would be joining McCain presidential campaign for domestic and foreign policy but instead replaced Wolfowitz as president of World Bank in 2007.
Has touted virtues of corporate globalization under the rubric of "comprehensive free trade." But as Kevin Watkins, head researcher for Oxfan, stated, he pays no heed to the effects of the "blind pursuit of US economic and corporate special interests" on the world's poor.
Gary Schmitt
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (home to other PNAC members including Wolfowitz and Pearle.)
PNAC director.
Foreign policy adviser.
Defended warrantless eavesdropping on Americans by claiming that Constitution "created a unitary chief executive. That chief executive could, in times of war or emergency, act with the decisiveness, dispatch and, yes, secrecy, needed to protect the country and its citizens."
Richard L. Armitage
Former deputy secretary of state in George W. Bush administration.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
By his own admission, was responsible for leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame's CIA identity to the press. Allegedly involved in Iran-Contra affair during Reagan administration.
Max Boot
Council on Foreign Relations.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
Stating that U.S. should "unambiguously ... embrace its imperial role," has advocated attacking other Middle East countries in addition to Iraq and Iran, including Syria. Said McCain's "bellicose aura" could "scare the snot out of our enemies," who "would be more afraid to mess with him" than with other then-potential presidential candidates.
Henry A. Kissinger
President Nixon's secretary of state.
Embraces expansionist power politics.
Consultant.
Played major role in secret bombings of Cambodia during Nixon administration as well as having had alleged involvement in covert assassination plots and human rights violations in Latin America.
What's in Store for Us if McCain Becomes President
That McCain has surrounded himself with such like-minded advisers who support the narrow PNAC agenda speaks to his unwillingness to hear and consider alternative perspectives. In fact, six out of 10 civilian foreign advisers to McCain are PNAC veterans. Even the newly appointed deputy communications director of the McCain campaign, Michael Goldfard, has been a research associate for PNAC. A die-hard adherent of the "unitary authority" of the chief executive, he recently stated that the framers of the United States Constitution advocated an "executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war."
Add to this list other major PNAC figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Dick Cheney who would probably play a significant role in a McCain administration and it is clear in what direction this nation would be moving.
A McCain administration would be likely to:
· Invest incredible amounts of money in sustaining multiple, simultaneous wars overseas at the expense of neglecting pressing concerns at home, including the economy, health care, the environment and education.
· Stockpile nuclear weapons, while seeking to prohibit its adversaries from having them.
· Attempt to shield the U.S. with a multilayered missile defense system based on land, at sea, in the air and in space, while demanding that nations that are not its allies become sitting ducks.
· Strive to develop more potent chemical and biological weapons—not to mention the genotype-specific variety, while at the same time claiming to be fighting a "war on terror."
· Legalize "Total Information Awareness"—going through all Americans' phone calls, e-mail messages and other personal records without needing probable cause.
· Take control of the Internet, globally using it as an offensive political weapon—while claiming to be spreading democracy throughout the world.
· Dispense with checks and balances in favor of the "unitary executive authority" of the president.
· Alienate nations that refuse to join our war coalitions.
· Deny that there is (or can be) a United Nations.
A McCain administration would rule by fear, perceive right in terms of military might and subscribe to the idea of "do as I say and not as I do." As a consequence, instead of rebuilding the image of America as a model of justice and civility, it would further sully respect for this nation throughout the world.
Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D., is a political analyst and media critic. His most recent book is "The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship." He was first-prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.
The First Step Toward Lasting Peace? An Apology By URI AVNERY
"I BELIEVE that peace between us and the Palestinian people - a real peace, based on real conciliation - starts with an apology." No, Uri Avnery. It does not start with an apology--whatever that means--it ends with an apology, but after the full restoration of rights, the liberation of occupied lands, and the return AND compensation of all Palestinian refugees. Apology? Give me a...potato.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery06162008.html
THIS WEEK, the Prime Minister of Canada made a dramatic statement in Parliament: he apologized to the indigenous peoples of his country for the injustices done to them for generations by successive Canadian governments.
This way, White Canada tries to make peace with the native nations, whose country their forefathers conquered and whose culture their rulers have tried to wipe out.
APOLOGIZING FOR past wrongs has become a part of modern political culture.
That is never an easy thing to do. Cynics might say: nothing to it. Just words. And words, after all, are a cheap commodity. But in fact, such acts have a profound significance. A human being - and even more so, a whole nation - always finds it hard to admit to iniquities performed and to atrocities committed. It means a rewriting of the historical narrative that forms the basis of their national cohesion. It necessitates a drastic change in the schoolbooks and in the national outlook. In general, governments are averse to this, because of the nationalistic demagogues and hate-mongers who infest every country.
The President of France has apologized on behalf of his people for the misdeeds of the Vichy regime, which turned Jews over to the Nazi exterminators. The Czech government has apologized to the Germans for the mass expulsion of the German population at the end of World War II. Germany, of course, has apologized to the Jews for the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust. Quite recently, the government of Australia has apologized to the Aborigines. And even in Israel, a feeble effort was made to heal a grievous domestic wound, when Ehud Barak apologized to the Oriental Jews for the discrimination they have suffered for many years.
But we face a much more difficult and complex problem. It concerns the roots of our national existence in Israel.
I BELIEVE that peace between us and the Palestinian people - a real peace, based on real conciliation - starts with an apology.
In my mind's eye I see the President of the State or the Prime Minister addressing a special extraordinary session of the Knesset and making a historic speech on the following lines:
SUCH A SPEECH is, to my mind, absolutely essential for opening a new chapter in the history of this country.
In decades of meeting with Palestinians of all walks of life, I have come to the conclusion that the emotional aspects of the conflict are no less - and perhaps even more - important than the political ones. A profound sense of injustice permeates the minds and actions of all Palestinians. Unconscious or half-conscious guilt feelings are troubling the souls of the Israelis, creating a deep conviction that Arabs will never make peace with us.
I do not know when such a speech will be possible. Many imponderable factors will have an impact on that. But I do know that without it, mere peace agreements, reached between haggling diplomats, will not suffice. As the Oslo agreements have shown, building an artificial island in a sea of stormy emotions just will not do.
THE PUBLIC apology by the Canadian Prime Minister is not the only thing we can learn from that North American country.
43 years ago, the Canadian government took an extraordinary step in order to make peace between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking minority among their citizens. That relationship had remained an open wound from the time the British conquered French Canada some 250 years ago. It was decided to replace the Canadian national flag, which was based on the British "Union Jack", with a completely new national flag, featuring the maple leaf.
On this occasion, the Speaker of the Senate said: "The flag is the symbol of the nation's unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief or opinion."
We can learn something from that, too.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery06162008.html
THIS WEEK, the Prime Minister of Canada made a dramatic statement in Parliament: he apologized to the indigenous peoples of his country for the injustices done to them for generations by successive Canadian governments.
This way, White Canada tries to make peace with the native nations, whose country their forefathers conquered and whose culture their rulers have tried to wipe out.
APOLOGIZING FOR past wrongs has become a part of modern political culture.
That is never an easy thing to do. Cynics might say: nothing to it. Just words. And words, after all, are a cheap commodity. But in fact, such acts have a profound significance. A human being - and even more so, a whole nation - always finds it hard to admit to iniquities performed and to atrocities committed. It means a rewriting of the historical narrative that forms the basis of their national cohesion. It necessitates a drastic change in the schoolbooks and in the national outlook. In general, governments are averse to this, because of the nationalistic demagogues and hate-mongers who infest every country.
The President of France has apologized on behalf of his people for the misdeeds of the Vichy regime, which turned Jews over to the Nazi exterminators. The Czech government has apologized to the Germans for the mass expulsion of the German population at the end of World War II. Germany, of course, has apologized to the Jews for the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust. Quite recently, the government of Australia has apologized to the Aborigines. And even in Israel, a feeble effort was made to heal a grievous domestic wound, when Ehud Barak apologized to the Oriental Jews for the discrimination they have suffered for many years.
But we face a much more difficult and complex problem. It concerns the roots of our national existence in Israel.
I BELIEVE that peace between us and the Palestinian people - a real peace, based on real conciliation - starts with an apology.
In my mind's eye I see the President of the State or the Prime Minister addressing a special extraordinary session of the Knesset and making a historic speech on the following lines:
MADAM SPEAKER, Honorable Knesset,
On behalf of the State of Israel and all its citizens, I address today the sons and daughters of the Palestinian people, wherever they are.
We recognize the fact that we have committed against you a historic injustice, and we humbly ask your forgiveness.
When the Zionist movement decided to establish a national home in this country, which we call Eretz Yisrael and you call Filastin, it had no intention of building our state on the ruins of another people. Indeed, almost no one in the Zionist movement had ever been in the country before the first Zionist Congress in 1897, or even had any idea about the actual situation here.
The burning desire of the founding fathers of this movement was to save the Jews of Europe, where the dark clouds of hatred for the Jews were gathering. In Eastern Europe, pogroms were raging, and all over Europe there were signs of the process that would eventually lead to the terrible Holocaust, in which six million Jews perished.
This basic aim attached itself to the profound devotion of the Jews, throughout the generations, to the country in which the Bible, the defining text of our people, was written, and to the city of Jerusalem, towards which the Jews have turned for thousands of years in their prayers.
The Zionist founders who came to this country were pioneers who carried in their hearts the most lofty ideals. They believed in national liberation, freedom, justice and equality. We are proud of them. They certainly did not dream of committing an injustice of historic dimensions.
ALL THIS does not justify what happened afterwards. The creation of the Jewish national home in this country has involved a profound injustice to you, the people who lived here for generations.
We cannot ignore anymore the fact that in the war of 1948 - which is the War of Independence for us, and the Naqba for you - some 750 thousand Palestinians were compelled to leave their homes and lands. As for the precise circumstances of this tragedy I propose the establishment of a "Committee for Truth and Reconciliation"' composed of experts from your and from our side, whose conclusions will from then on be incorporated in the schoolbooks, yours and ours.
We cannot ignore anymore the fact that for 60 years of conflict and war, you have been prevented from realizing your natural right to independence in your own free national state, a right confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, which also formed the legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel.
For all this, we owe you an apology, and I express it hereby with all my heart.
The Bible tells us: "Whoso confesseth (his crimes) and forsakes them shall have mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). Clearly, confession does not suffice. We have also to forsake the wrongs we have done in the past.
It is impossible to turn the wheel of history back and restore the situation that existed in the country in 1947, much as Canada - or the United States, for that matter - cannot go back 200 years. We must build our common future on the joint desire to move forwards, to heal what can be healed and repair what can be repaired without inflicting new wounds, committing new injustices and causing more human tragedies.
I urge you to accept our apology in the spirit in which it is offered. Let us work together for a just, viable and practical solution of our century-old conflict - a solution that may not fulfill all justified aspirations nor right all wrongs, but which will allow both our peoples to live their lives in freedom, peace and prosperity.
This solution is clear for all to see. We all know what it is. It has emerged from our painful experiences, hammered out by the lessons of our sufferings, crystallized by the exertions of the best of our minds - yours as well as ours.
This solution means, simply: You have the same rights as we. We have the same rights as you: to live in a state of our own, under our own flag, governed by laws of our own making, ruled by a government freely elected by ourselves - hopefully a good one.
One of the fundamental commandments of our religion - as of yours and every other - was pronounced 2000 years ago by Rabbi Hillel: Do not unto others, what you do not want others to do to you.
This means in practice: your right to establish at once the free and sovereign State of Palestine in all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, which will be accepted as a full member of the United Nations.
The borders of June 4, 1967, will be restored. I hope that we can agree, in free negotiations, to minimal exchanges of territory beneficial to both sides.
Jerusalem, which is so dear to all of us, must be the capital of both our states - West Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the capital of Israel, East Jerusalem, including al-Haram al-Sharif, which we call the Temple Mount, the capital of Palestine. What is Arab shall be yours, what is Jewish shall be ours. Let us work together to keep the city, as a living reality, open and united.
We shall evacuate the Israeli settlements, which have caused so much suffering and iniquities to you, and bring the settlers home, except from those small areas which will be joined to Israel in the framework of freely agreed swaps of territory. We shall also dismantle all the paraphernalia of the occupation, both physical and institutional.
We must approach with open hearts, compassion and common sense, the task of finding a just and viable solution for the terrible tragedy of the refugees and their decendants. Each refugee family must be granted a free choice between the various solutions: repatriation and resettlement in the State of Palestine, with generous assistance; staying where they are or emigration to any country of their choice, also with generous assistance; and yes - coming back to the territory of Israel in acceptable numbers, agreed by us. The refugees themselves must be a full partner in all our efforts.
I trust that our two states - Israel and Palestine, living side by side in this beloved but small country, will quickly come together on the human, social, economic, technological and cultural levels, creating a relationship that will not only guarantee our security, but also rapid development and prosperity for all.
Together we will work for peace and prosperity throughout our region, based on close relations with all the countries of the area.
Committed to peace and vowing to create a better future for our children and grandchildren, let us rise to our feet and bow our heads in memory of the countless victims of our conflict, Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians - a conflict that has lasted far too long.
SUCH A SPEECH is, to my mind, absolutely essential for opening a new chapter in the history of this country.
In decades of meeting with Palestinians of all walks of life, I have come to the conclusion that the emotional aspects of the conflict are no less - and perhaps even more - important than the political ones. A profound sense of injustice permeates the minds and actions of all Palestinians. Unconscious or half-conscious guilt feelings are troubling the souls of the Israelis, creating a deep conviction that Arabs will never make peace with us.
I do not know when such a speech will be possible. Many imponderable factors will have an impact on that. But I do know that without it, mere peace agreements, reached between haggling diplomats, will not suffice. As the Oslo agreements have shown, building an artificial island in a sea of stormy emotions just will not do.
THE PUBLIC apology by the Canadian Prime Minister is not the only thing we can learn from that North American country.
43 years ago, the Canadian government took an extraordinary step in order to make peace between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking minority among their citizens. That relationship had remained an open wound from the time the British conquered French Canada some 250 years ago. It was decided to replace the Canadian national flag, which was based on the British "Union Jack", with a completely new national flag, featuring the maple leaf.
On this occasion, the Speaker of the Senate said: "The flag is the symbol of the nation's unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief or opinion."
We can learn something from that, too.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38775.html
U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases
This picture ( http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38775.html ) from a U.S. court martial file, drawn by military polygraph examiner George Chigi III, shows how Afghan detainee Dilawar was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of an isolation cell at Bagram Air Base before being beaten to death in December 2002.
By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that's used to corral livestock.
The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.
Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.
"I was punched and kicked at Bagram. ... At Bagram, when they took a man to interrogation at night, the next morning we would see him brought out on a stretcher looking almost dead," said Aminullah, an Afghan who was held there for a little more than three months. "But at Guantanamo, there were rules, there was law."
Nazar Chaman Gul, an Afghan who was held at Bagram for more than three months in 2003, said he was beaten about every five days. American soldiers would walk into the pen where he slept on the floor and ram their combat boots into his back and stomach, Gul said. "Two or three of them would come in suddenly, tie my hands and beat me," he said.
When the kicking started, Gul said, he'd cry out, "I am not a terrorist," then beg God for mercy. Mercy was slow in coming. He was shipped to Guantanamo around the late summer of 2003 and imprisoned there for more than three years.
According to Afghan officials and a review of his case, Gul wasn't a member of al Qaida or of the extremist Taliban regime that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At the time he was detained, he was working as a fuel depot guard for the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
When U.S. soldiers raided the house he was visiting, acting on a tip from a tribal rival who was seeking revenge against another man, they apparently confused Gul with a militant with a similar name — who was also imprisoned at Guantanamo, according to an Afghan intelligence official and Gul's American lawyer.
The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of detainees at Bagram has been reported by U.S. media organizations, in particular The New York Times, which broke several developments in the story. But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn't previously been revealed.
Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida's 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida.
Former detainees at Bagram and Kandahar said they were beaten regularly. Of the 41 former Bagram detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, 28 said that guards or interrogators had assaulted them. Only eight of those men said they were beaten at Guantanamo Bay.
Because President Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishments have been administered, even in the cases of two detainees who died after American guards beat them.
In an effort to assemble as complete a picture as possible of U.S. detention practices, McClatchy reporters interviewed 66 former detainees, double-checked key elements of their accounts, spoke with U.S. soldiers who'd served as detention camp guards and reviewed thousands of pages of records from Army courts-martial and human rights reports.
The Bush administration refuses to release full records of detainee treatment in the war on terrorism, and no senior Bush administration official would agree to an on-the-record interview to discuss McClatchy's findings.
The most violent of the major U.S. detention centers, the McClatchy investigation found, was Bagram, an old Soviet airstrip about 30 miles outside Kabul. The worst period at Bagram was the seven months from the summer of 2002 to spring of 2003, when interrogators there used techniques that when repeated later at Abu Ghraib led to wholesale abuses.
New detainees were shoved to the floor of a cavernous warehouse, a former Soviet aircraft machine shop that stayed dim all day, and kept in pens where they weren't allowed to speak or look at guards.
The Afghan government initially based a group of intelligence officers at Bagram, but they were pushed out. Mohammed Arif Sarwari, the head of Afghanistan's national security directorate from late 2001 to 2003, said he got a letter from U.S. commanders in mid-2002 telling him to get his men out of Bagram.
Sarwari thought that was a bad sign: The Americans, he thought, were creating an island with no one to watch over them.
"I said I didn't want to be involved with what they were doing at Bagram — who they were arresting or what they were doing with them," he said in an interview in Kabul.
The rate of reported abuse was higher among men who were held at the U.S. camp at Kandahar Airfield. Thirty-two out of 42 men held there whom McClatchy interviewed claimed that they were knocked to the ground or slapped about. But former detainees said the violence at Bagram was much harsher.
The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists.
Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He'd been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was "falling apart" and had "basically been pulpified," said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.
Had Dilawar lived, Rouse said in sworn testimony, "I believe the injury to the legs are so extensive that it would have required amputation."
After Habibullah died, a legal officer for U.S. forces in Afghanistan asked two military police guards at Bagram to demonstrate how they'd chained detainees' wrists above their heads in a small plywood isolation cell.
"Frankly, it didn't look good," Maj. Jeff Bovarnick, the legal adviser for the Bagram detention center from November 2002 to June 2003, said during a military investigation hearing in June 2005.
"This guy is chained up and has a hood on his head," Bovarnick continued. "The two MPs that were demonstrating this took about five minutes to get everything hook(ed) up; and I was thinking to myself, if this was a combative detainee, it must have been a real struggle for them to get him to comply, and the things they must have been doing to make him comply."
The only American officer who's been reprimanded for the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar is Army Capt. Christopher Beiring, who commanded the 377th Military Police Company from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2003.
Beiring told investigators that he'd received no formal training in leading a military police company, "just the correspondence courses and on-the-job training."
Then-Lt. Col. Thomas S. Berg, the Army lawyer who investigated Beiring in the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar, argued that: "The government failed to present any evidence of what are 'approved tactics, techniques and procedures in detainee operations.' "
On Berg's recommendation, the charges against Beiring were dropped, and he was given a letter of reprimand.
"It's extremely hard to wage war with so many undefined rules and roles," Beiring said in a phone interview with McClatchy. "It was very crazy."
The commander of the military intelligence section that worked alongside Beiring's military police company at Bagram, Capt. Carolyn Wood, declined to comment.
The soldier who faced the most serious charges, Spc. Willie Brand, admitted that he hit Dilawar about 37 times, including some 30 times in the flesh around the knees during one session in an isolation cell.
Brand, who faced up to 11 years in prison, was reduced in rank to private — his only punishment — after he was found guilty of assaulting and maiming Dilawar.
'EVERYBODY STRUCK A DETAINEE'
U.S. soldiers' testimony in military investigations after the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar suggested that detainee abuse at Bagram occurred from the summer of 2002 to spring of 2003, a period of about seven months.
Soldiers who served at Bagram before that time said detainees were never beaten. Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine Reserves officer who worked there from December 2001 to April 2002, said in an interview that none of the soldiers or American operatives he knew had resorted to abusing detainees.
An Army interrogator who was based at Bagram in the spring of 2002 and later wrote a book under the pseudonym of Chris Mackey for security reasons, said in an e-mail exchange that while soldiers pushed the limits — such as using stress positions and sleep deprivation — he never saw or heard of detainees getting beaten.
Former detainees interviewed by McClatchy and by some human rights groups, however, claimed that the violence was rampant from late 2001 until the summer of 2003 or later, at least 20 months.
Although they were at Bagram at different times and speak different languages, the 28 former detainees who told McClatchy that they'd been abused there told strikingly similar stories:
Bashir Ahmad, a Pakistani who fought with the Taliban, said that in the late spring or summer of 2003, U.S. troops would chain him to the ceiling by his hands or feet. "Then they would punch me or hit me with a wood rod," he said.
Brahim Yadel, a French citizen, said he was punched and slapped during interrogations at Bagram in December 2001.
Moazzem Begg, a British citizen, said he was assaulted regularly at Bagram for most of 2002, until he was transferred to Guantanamo in January 2003.
Akhtar Mohammed, an Afghan, said that at Bagram during the spring of 2003, "when they moved me to the interrogation room they covered my eyes, and took me up steep stairs. I always fell on the ground. And when I fell down, they punched and kicked me."
Abdul Haleem, a Pakistani, said that U.S. soldiers threw him to the ground at Bagram in 2003 and kicked him in the head, "like they were playing soccer."
Adel al Zamel, a Kuwaiti, said guards frequently waved sticks at him and threatened to rape him at Bagram during the spring of 2002. During an interview in Kuwait City, Zamel shook his head and said he remembered hearing detainees being beaten and "the cries from the interrogation room" at Bagram.
He wasn't the only person to report sexual humiliation.
Sgt. Selena Salcedo, a U.S. military intelligence officer, said that sometime between August 2002 and February 2003 she saw another interrogator, Pfc. Damien Corsetti, pull down the pants of a detainee and leave his genitals exposed.
In a 2005 sworn statement in the court-martial of Corsetti, she said she'd left the room and that when she'd returned the detainee was bent over a table and Corsetti was waving a plastic bottle near his buttocks. She said she didn't know whether the detainee had been raped.
Corsetti was acquitted of any wrongdoing. He didn't respond to a request for comment submitted through his attorney. Salcedo pleaded guilty to kicking a detainee — Dilawar — and grabbing his ears during a December 2002 interrogation.
Soldiers who served at Bagram starting in the summer of 2002 confirmed that detainees there were struck routinely.
"Whether they got in trouble or not, everybody struck a detainee at some point," said Brian Cammack, a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cincinnati. He was sentenced to three months in military confinement and a dishonorable discharge for hitting Habibullah.
Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to striking about 12 detainees at Bagram, told military investigators in sworn testimony that he was uncomfortable following orders to "mentally and physically break the detainees." He didn't go into detail.
"I guess you can call it torture," said Callaway, who served in the 377th from August 2002 to January 2003.
Many human rights experts say the U.S. military began cracking down on detainee abuse at Bagram in 2004, in response to the public outcry over pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
RETRIBUTION FOR 9-11
Asked why someone would abuse a detainee, Callaway told military investigators: "Retribution for September 11, 2001."
When detainees first had their hoods removed on arriving at Bagram, looming behind them was a large American flag and insignia of the New York Police Department, a reminder of Sept. 11.
Almost none of the detainees at Bagram, however, had anything to do with the terrorist attacks.
Bovarnick, the former chief legal officer for operational law in Afghanistan and Bagram legal adviser, said in a sworn statement that of some 500 detainees he knew of who'd passed through Bagram, only about 10 were high-value targets, the military's term for senior terrorist operatives.
That hardly mattered.
Khaled al Asmr, a tall, gaunt Jordanian, was hauled off a U.S. military cargo plane at Bagram in early 2002. Flown in from Pakistan in heavy shackles and with a hood on his head, he was accused of being an al Qaida operative with possible connections to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Standing in an interrogation room, Asmr said, he'd already been punched in the face several times by American guards. Two Americans walked into the room, wearing civilian clothes. They pulled out pistols and held them to either side of his head as a third American man entered and walked up to Asmr, according to his account.
The third man leaned toward Asmr's face and whispered, his breath warm, "I am here to save you from these people, but you must tell me you are al Qaida."
Asmr, who told his story to a McClatchy reporter in Jordan, was declared no longer an enemy combatant after a 2004 U.S. military tribunal at Guantanamo. He said he'd known some al Qaida leaders, but that was more than 15 years earlier, during the U.S.-backed Afghan uprising against the Soviets.
Nazar Gul was of even less intelligence value. None of the Afghan security or intelligence officials whom McClatchy interviewed said they'd heard of Gul, making it unlikely that he was the dangerous insurgent the U.S. said he was.
Gul's American attorney, Ruben L. Iniguez, went to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2006 to check the details of his story of working as a guard for the Afghan government, and later said in sworn court filings — which included videotaped testimony by witnesses — and in an interview with McClatchy that every fact checked out.
A LAWLESS PLACE
The mistreatment of detainees at Bagram, some legal experts said, may have been a violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which forbids violence against or humiliating treatment of detainees.
The U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 imposes penalties up to death for such mistreatment.
At Bagram, however, the rules didn't apply. In February 2002, President Bush issued an order denying suspected Taliban and al Qaida detainees prisoner-of-war status. He also denied them basic Geneva protections known as Common Article Three, which sets a minimum standard for humane treatment.
Without those parameters, it's difficult to say what acts were or were not war crimes, said Charles Garraway, a former colonel and legal adviser for the British army and a leading international expert on military law.
Bush's order made it hard to prosecute soldiers for breaking such rules under the military's basic law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in large part because defense attorneys could claim that troops on the ground didn't know what was allowed.
In sweeping aside Common Article Three, the Bush administration created an environment in which abuse such as that at Bagram was more likely, said Garraway, a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
"I think it's completely predictable, because you no longer have standards," he said.
In 2006, Bush pushed Congress to narrow the definition of a war crime under the War Crimes Act, making prosecution even more difficult.
UNTRAINED, UNDISCIPLINED
The military police at Bagram had guidelines, Army Regulation 190-47, telling them they couldn't chain prisoners to doors or to the ceiling. They also had Army Regulation 190-8, which said that humiliating detainees wasn't allowed.
Neither was applicable at Bagram, however, said Bovarnick, the former senior legal officer for the installation.
The military police rulebook saying that enemy prisoners of war should be treated humanely didn't apply, he said, because the detainees weren't prisoners of war, according to the Bush administration's decision to withhold Geneva Convention protections from suspected Taliban and al Qaida detainees.
The military police guide for the Army correctional system, which prohibits "securing a prisoner to a fixed object, except in emergencies," wasn't applicable, either, because Bagram wasn't a correctional facility, Bovarnick told investigators in 2004.
"I do not believe there is a document anywhere which states that ... either regulation applies, and there is clear guidance by the secretary of defense that detainees were not EPWs," enemy prisoners of war, Bovarnick said.
Compounding the problem, military police guards and interrogators lacked proper training and received little instruction from commanders about how to do their jobs, according to sworn testimony taken during military investigations and interviews by McClatchy.
The guards who worked there from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2003 were all reservists from the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati, and many of the military intelligence interrogators serving at the same time were from the Utah Army National Guard.
Good order and discipline had evaporated.
1st Sgt. Betty Jones said during a 2004 interview with investigators that a fellow military police sergeant and his men on several occasions were "drunk to the point that they could not go to duty."
Salcedo, the military intelligence soldier, said in her statement at Corsetti's court-martial that she and others drank alcohol during their time at Bagram, and at one point smoked hashish on the roof of a building.
Cammack told McClatchy that one of his sergeants drove a John Deere Gator, a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, to a nearby town and traded with locals for bottles of vodka.
"Really, nobody was in charge ... the leadership did nothing to help us. If we had any questions, it was pretty much 'figure it out on your own,' " Cammack said. "When you asked about protocol they said it's a work in progress."
PENTAGON RESPONSE
Senior Pentagon officials refused to be interviewed for this article. In response to a series of questions and interview requests, Col. Gary Keck, a Defense Department spokesman, released this statement:
"The Department of Defense policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely. The United States operates safe, humane and professional detention operations for unlawful enemy combatants at war with this country."
No U.S. military officer above the rank of captain has been called to account for what happened at Bagram.
The head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan when prisoners were being abused at Bagram, then-Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, declined an interview request. McNeill was later made the commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, a post he held until recently.
His predecessor, then-Maj. Gen. Franklin L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, said in an e-mail exchange that from late 2001 to 2002, his attention wasn't on detainee facilities.
"Unfortunately, I have nothing to add to your reporting ... I was focused on battling the Taliban and al Qaida, as well as reconstruction and coordinating with the nascent Afghan government," Hagenbeck wrote. "I do not personally know of any abuses while I was there, and we focused on treating all with dignity and respect — even, and perhaps especially, those persons in our custody."
Hagenbeck is now the superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Capt. Carolyn Wood, who led the interrogators at Bagram, was sent to Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003 and assumed control of interrogation operations there that August.
A military investigation that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal — known as the "Fay-Jones Report" for the two generals who authored it — found that from July 2003 to February of 2004, 27 military intelligence personnel there allegedly encouraged or condoned the abuse of detainees, violated established interrogation procedures or participated in abuse themselves.
The abuse resembled what former Bagram detainees described.
A key factor in serious cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the report found, was the construction of isolation areas, a move requested by Wood, who said that "based on her experience" such facilities made it easier to extract information from detainees.
Wood remains an active-duty military intelligence officer.
(Matthew Schofield contributed to this report from Paris and Lyon, France.)
U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases
This picture ( http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38775.html ) from a U.S. court martial file, drawn by military polygraph examiner George Chigi III, shows how Afghan detainee Dilawar was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of an isolation cell at Bagram Air Base before being beaten to death in December 2002.
By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that's used to corral livestock.
The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.
Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.
"I was punched and kicked at Bagram. ... At Bagram, when they took a man to interrogation at night, the next morning we would see him brought out on a stretcher looking almost dead," said Aminullah, an Afghan who was held there for a little more than three months. "But at Guantanamo, there were rules, there was law."
Nazar Chaman Gul, an Afghan who was held at Bagram for more than three months in 2003, said he was beaten about every five days. American soldiers would walk into the pen where he slept on the floor and ram their combat boots into his back and stomach, Gul said. "Two or three of them would come in suddenly, tie my hands and beat me," he said.
When the kicking started, Gul said, he'd cry out, "I am not a terrorist," then beg God for mercy. Mercy was slow in coming. He was shipped to Guantanamo around the late summer of 2003 and imprisoned there for more than three years.
According to Afghan officials and a review of his case, Gul wasn't a member of al Qaida or of the extremist Taliban regime that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At the time he was detained, he was working as a fuel depot guard for the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
When U.S. soldiers raided the house he was visiting, acting on a tip from a tribal rival who was seeking revenge against another man, they apparently confused Gul with a militant with a similar name — who was also imprisoned at Guantanamo, according to an Afghan intelligence official and Gul's American lawyer.
The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of detainees at Bagram has been reported by U.S. media organizations, in particular The New York Times, which broke several developments in the story. But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn't previously been revealed.
Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida's 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida.
Former detainees at Bagram and Kandahar said they were beaten regularly. Of the 41 former Bagram detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, 28 said that guards or interrogators had assaulted them. Only eight of those men said they were beaten at Guantanamo Bay.
Because President Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishments have been administered, even in the cases of two detainees who died after American guards beat them.
In an effort to assemble as complete a picture as possible of U.S. detention practices, McClatchy reporters interviewed 66 former detainees, double-checked key elements of their accounts, spoke with U.S. soldiers who'd served as detention camp guards and reviewed thousands of pages of records from Army courts-martial and human rights reports.
The Bush administration refuses to release full records of detainee treatment in the war on terrorism, and no senior Bush administration official would agree to an on-the-record interview to discuss McClatchy's findings.
The most violent of the major U.S. detention centers, the McClatchy investigation found, was Bagram, an old Soviet airstrip about 30 miles outside Kabul. The worst period at Bagram was the seven months from the summer of 2002 to spring of 2003, when interrogators there used techniques that when repeated later at Abu Ghraib led to wholesale abuses.
New detainees were shoved to the floor of a cavernous warehouse, a former Soviet aircraft machine shop that stayed dim all day, and kept in pens where they weren't allowed to speak or look at guards.
The Afghan government initially based a group of intelligence officers at Bagram, but they were pushed out. Mohammed Arif Sarwari, the head of Afghanistan's national security directorate from late 2001 to 2003, said he got a letter from U.S. commanders in mid-2002 telling him to get his men out of Bagram.
Sarwari thought that was a bad sign: The Americans, he thought, were creating an island with no one to watch over them.
"I said I didn't want to be involved with what they were doing at Bagram — who they were arresting or what they were doing with them," he said in an interview in Kabul.
The rate of reported abuse was higher among men who were held at the U.S. camp at Kandahar Airfield. Thirty-two out of 42 men held there whom McClatchy interviewed claimed that they were knocked to the ground or slapped about. But former detainees said the violence at Bagram was much harsher.
The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists.
Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He'd been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was "falling apart" and had "basically been pulpified," said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.
Had Dilawar lived, Rouse said in sworn testimony, "I believe the injury to the legs are so extensive that it would have required amputation."
After Habibullah died, a legal officer for U.S. forces in Afghanistan asked two military police guards at Bagram to demonstrate how they'd chained detainees' wrists above their heads in a small plywood isolation cell.
"Frankly, it didn't look good," Maj. Jeff Bovarnick, the legal adviser for the Bagram detention center from November 2002 to June 2003, said during a military investigation hearing in June 2005.
"This guy is chained up and has a hood on his head," Bovarnick continued. "The two MPs that were demonstrating this took about five minutes to get everything hook(ed) up; and I was thinking to myself, if this was a combative detainee, it must have been a real struggle for them to get him to comply, and the things they must have been doing to make him comply."
The only American officer who's been reprimanded for the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar is Army Capt. Christopher Beiring, who commanded the 377th Military Police Company from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2003.
Beiring told investigators that he'd received no formal training in leading a military police company, "just the correspondence courses and on-the-job training."
Then-Lt. Col. Thomas S. Berg, the Army lawyer who investigated Beiring in the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar, argued that: "The government failed to present any evidence of what are 'approved tactics, techniques and procedures in detainee operations.' "
On Berg's recommendation, the charges against Beiring were dropped, and he was given a letter of reprimand.
"It's extremely hard to wage war with so many undefined rules and roles," Beiring said in a phone interview with McClatchy. "It was very crazy."
The commander of the military intelligence section that worked alongside Beiring's military police company at Bagram, Capt. Carolyn Wood, declined to comment.
The soldier who faced the most serious charges, Spc. Willie Brand, admitted that he hit Dilawar about 37 times, including some 30 times in the flesh around the knees during one session in an isolation cell.
Brand, who faced up to 11 years in prison, was reduced in rank to private — his only punishment — after he was found guilty of assaulting and maiming Dilawar.
'EVERYBODY STRUCK A DETAINEE'
U.S. soldiers' testimony in military investigations after the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar suggested that detainee abuse at Bagram occurred from the summer of 2002 to spring of 2003, a period of about seven months.
Soldiers who served at Bagram before that time said detainees were never beaten. Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine Reserves officer who worked there from December 2001 to April 2002, said in an interview that none of the soldiers or American operatives he knew had resorted to abusing detainees.
An Army interrogator who was based at Bagram in the spring of 2002 and later wrote a book under the pseudonym of Chris Mackey for security reasons, said in an e-mail exchange that while soldiers pushed the limits — such as using stress positions and sleep deprivation — he never saw or heard of detainees getting beaten.
Former detainees interviewed by McClatchy and by some human rights groups, however, claimed that the violence was rampant from late 2001 until the summer of 2003 or later, at least 20 months.
Although they were at Bagram at different times and speak different languages, the 28 former detainees who told McClatchy that they'd been abused there told strikingly similar stories:
Bashir Ahmad, a Pakistani who fought with the Taliban, said that in the late spring or summer of 2003, U.S. troops would chain him to the ceiling by his hands or feet. "Then they would punch me or hit me with a wood rod," he said.
Brahim Yadel, a French citizen, said he was punched and slapped during interrogations at Bagram in December 2001.
Moazzem Begg, a British citizen, said he was assaulted regularly at Bagram for most of 2002, until he was transferred to Guantanamo in January 2003.
Akhtar Mohammed, an Afghan, said that at Bagram during the spring of 2003, "when they moved me to the interrogation room they covered my eyes, and took me up steep stairs. I always fell on the ground. And when I fell down, they punched and kicked me."
Abdul Haleem, a Pakistani, said that U.S. soldiers threw him to the ground at Bagram in 2003 and kicked him in the head, "like they were playing soccer."
Adel al Zamel, a Kuwaiti, said guards frequently waved sticks at him and threatened to rape him at Bagram during the spring of 2002. During an interview in Kuwait City, Zamel shook his head and said he remembered hearing detainees being beaten and "the cries from the interrogation room" at Bagram.
He wasn't the only person to report sexual humiliation.
Sgt. Selena Salcedo, a U.S. military intelligence officer, said that sometime between August 2002 and February 2003 she saw another interrogator, Pfc. Damien Corsetti, pull down the pants of a detainee and leave his genitals exposed.
In a 2005 sworn statement in the court-martial of Corsetti, she said she'd left the room and that when she'd returned the detainee was bent over a table and Corsetti was waving a plastic bottle near his buttocks. She said she didn't know whether the detainee had been raped.
Corsetti was acquitted of any wrongdoing. He didn't respond to a request for comment submitted through his attorney. Salcedo pleaded guilty to kicking a detainee — Dilawar — and grabbing his ears during a December 2002 interrogation.
Soldiers who served at Bagram starting in the summer of 2002 confirmed that detainees there were struck routinely.
"Whether they got in trouble or not, everybody struck a detainee at some point," said Brian Cammack, a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cincinnati. He was sentenced to three months in military confinement and a dishonorable discharge for hitting Habibullah.
Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to striking about 12 detainees at Bagram, told military investigators in sworn testimony that he was uncomfortable following orders to "mentally and physically break the detainees." He didn't go into detail.
"I guess you can call it torture," said Callaway, who served in the 377th from August 2002 to January 2003.
Many human rights experts say the U.S. military began cracking down on detainee abuse at Bagram in 2004, in response to the public outcry over pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
RETRIBUTION FOR 9-11
Asked why someone would abuse a detainee, Callaway told military investigators: "Retribution for September 11, 2001."
When detainees first had their hoods removed on arriving at Bagram, looming behind them was a large American flag and insignia of the New York Police Department, a reminder of Sept. 11.
Almost none of the detainees at Bagram, however, had anything to do with the terrorist attacks.
Bovarnick, the former chief legal officer for operational law in Afghanistan and Bagram legal adviser, said in a sworn statement that of some 500 detainees he knew of who'd passed through Bagram, only about 10 were high-value targets, the military's term for senior terrorist operatives.
That hardly mattered.
Khaled al Asmr, a tall, gaunt Jordanian, was hauled off a U.S. military cargo plane at Bagram in early 2002. Flown in from Pakistan in heavy shackles and with a hood on his head, he was accused of being an al Qaida operative with possible connections to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Standing in an interrogation room, Asmr said, he'd already been punched in the face several times by American guards. Two Americans walked into the room, wearing civilian clothes. They pulled out pistols and held them to either side of his head as a third American man entered and walked up to Asmr, according to his account.
The third man leaned toward Asmr's face and whispered, his breath warm, "I am here to save you from these people, but you must tell me you are al Qaida."
Asmr, who told his story to a McClatchy reporter in Jordan, was declared no longer an enemy combatant after a 2004 U.S. military tribunal at Guantanamo. He said he'd known some al Qaida leaders, but that was more than 15 years earlier, during the U.S.-backed Afghan uprising against the Soviets.
Nazar Gul was of even less intelligence value. None of the Afghan security or intelligence officials whom McClatchy interviewed said they'd heard of Gul, making it unlikely that he was the dangerous insurgent the U.S. said he was.
Gul's American attorney, Ruben L. Iniguez, went to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2006 to check the details of his story of working as a guard for the Afghan government, and later said in sworn court filings — which included videotaped testimony by witnesses — and in an interview with McClatchy that every fact checked out.
A LAWLESS PLACE
The mistreatment of detainees at Bagram, some legal experts said, may have been a violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which forbids violence against or humiliating treatment of detainees.
The U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 imposes penalties up to death for such mistreatment.
At Bagram, however, the rules didn't apply. In February 2002, President Bush issued an order denying suspected Taliban and al Qaida detainees prisoner-of-war status. He also denied them basic Geneva protections known as Common Article Three, which sets a minimum standard for humane treatment.
Without those parameters, it's difficult to say what acts were or were not war crimes, said Charles Garraway, a former colonel and legal adviser for the British army and a leading international expert on military law.
Bush's order made it hard to prosecute soldiers for breaking such rules under the military's basic law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in large part because defense attorneys could claim that troops on the ground didn't know what was allowed.
In sweeping aside Common Article Three, the Bush administration created an environment in which abuse such as that at Bagram was more likely, said Garraway, a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
"I think it's completely predictable, because you no longer have standards," he said.
In 2006, Bush pushed Congress to narrow the definition of a war crime under the War Crimes Act, making prosecution even more difficult.
UNTRAINED, UNDISCIPLINED
The military police at Bagram had guidelines, Army Regulation 190-47, telling them they couldn't chain prisoners to doors or to the ceiling. They also had Army Regulation 190-8, which said that humiliating detainees wasn't allowed.
Neither was applicable at Bagram, however, said Bovarnick, the former senior legal officer for the installation.
The military police rulebook saying that enemy prisoners of war should be treated humanely didn't apply, he said, because the detainees weren't prisoners of war, according to the Bush administration's decision to withhold Geneva Convention protections from suspected Taliban and al Qaida detainees.
The military police guide for the Army correctional system, which prohibits "securing a prisoner to a fixed object, except in emergencies," wasn't applicable, either, because Bagram wasn't a correctional facility, Bovarnick told investigators in 2004.
"I do not believe there is a document anywhere which states that ... either regulation applies, and there is clear guidance by the secretary of defense that detainees were not EPWs," enemy prisoners of war, Bovarnick said.
Compounding the problem, military police guards and interrogators lacked proper training and received little instruction from commanders about how to do their jobs, according to sworn testimony taken during military investigations and interviews by McClatchy.
The guards who worked there from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2003 were all reservists from the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati, and many of the military intelligence interrogators serving at the same time were from the Utah Army National Guard.
Good order and discipline had evaporated.
1st Sgt. Betty Jones said during a 2004 interview with investigators that a fellow military police sergeant and his men on several occasions were "drunk to the point that they could not go to duty."
Salcedo, the military intelligence soldier, said in her statement at Corsetti's court-martial that she and others drank alcohol during their time at Bagram, and at one point smoked hashish on the roof of a building.
Cammack told McClatchy that one of his sergeants drove a John Deere Gator, a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, to a nearby town and traded with locals for bottles of vodka.
"Really, nobody was in charge ... the leadership did nothing to help us. If we had any questions, it was pretty much 'figure it out on your own,' " Cammack said. "When you asked about protocol they said it's a work in progress."
PENTAGON RESPONSE
Senior Pentagon officials refused to be interviewed for this article. In response to a series of questions and interview requests, Col. Gary Keck, a Defense Department spokesman, released this statement:
"The Department of Defense policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely. The United States operates safe, humane and professional detention operations for unlawful enemy combatants at war with this country."
No U.S. military officer above the rank of captain has been called to account for what happened at Bagram.
The head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan when prisoners were being abused at Bagram, then-Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, declined an interview request. McNeill was later made the commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, a post he held until recently.
His predecessor, then-Maj. Gen. Franklin L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, said in an e-mail exchange that from late 2001 to 2002, his attention wasn't on detainee facilities.
"Unfortunately, I have nothing to add to your reporting ... I was focused on battling the Taliban and al Qaida, as well as reconstruction and coordinating with the nascent Afghan government," Hagenbeck wrote. "I do not personally know of any abuses while I was there, and we focused on treating all with dignity and respect — even, and perhaps especially, those persons in our custody."
Hagenbeck is now the superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Capt. Carolyn Wood, who led the interrogators at Bagram, was sent to Abu Ghraib in the summer of 2003 and assumed control of interrogation operations there that August.
A military investigation that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal — known as the "Fay-Jones Report" for the two generals who authored it — found that from July 2003 to February of 2004, 27 military intelligence personnel there allegedly encouraged or condoned the abuse of detainees, violated established interrogation procedures or participated in abuse themselves.
The abuse resembled what former Bagram detainees described.
A key factor in serious cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the report found, was the construction of isolation areas, a move requested by Wood, who said that "based on her experience" such facilities made it easier to extract information from detainees.
Wood remains an active-duty military intelligence officer.
(Matthew Schofield contributed to this report from Paris and Lyon, France.)